501 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 13, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition


Fact and friction in TV ads


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 580 words



Obama ads

 

Romney ads

 

"Table": This is an unusually long ad - two minutes - in which Obama talks directly to the camera and outlines his plans for the nation. We had previously given this ad Three Pinocchios for Obama's claim that Romney would "double down" on the same tax-cut and regulatory policies that caused the economic crisis. There is no evidence that the George W. Bush tax cuts led to the crisis. In this ad, Obama also repeats a claim we have frequently faulted - that the savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq can be used for nation-building at home and to reduce the deficit. It is a budgetary gimmick that still puts the money on the credit card that Obama has long decried as bad policy under Bush.

 

"These hands": This ad features a small-businessman who denounces Obama for his comments - taken out of context - that "if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." The full comment, made in a campaign speech, makes it pretty clear that the "that" referred to roads and bridges, as part of a riff on how the wealthy should give something back to the government because they benefit from it in many ways. (Later it emerged that the business owner in the ad had benefited from millions of dollars in government contracts.) But that did not stop Republicans from making "build that" the theme of the first night of the GOP convention.

 

"Heard it all before": This ad trashes Romney's economic record as Massachusetts governor, frequently stretching the truth. It claims Massachusetts was 47th in job creation in the nation, but that is a blended four-year rating, and thus ignores the fact that Romney boosted the Bay State's standing - from 50th to 28th - in tough economic times. The state debt did increase by $2.6 billion, but much of that was for capital investments such as public buildings and roads, not operating expenses.

 

"Stand Up to China": The ad claims that Obama's policies toward China have "cost us 2 million jobs." The claim was based on a 2011 report from the International Trade Commission, which noted that improving protection of intellectual-property rights could lead to an additional 2.1 million jobs. But that is not a result of Obama's policies. The report framed it as an opportunity lost, not the disappearance of jobs. In fact, the report notes that the Obama administration had taken action on the issue.

 

"Firms":This sly, almost wicked ad features Romney singing "America the Beautiful" while images flash of his alleged connections overseas - his Bain Capital firms shipping jobs to Mexico and China, outsourcing jobs to India as governor, and his use of a Swiss bank account and tax havens overseas. We did not rate this specific ad but have investigated most of these claims, and they are exaggerated or lack evidence.

 

"Too many Americans": This 60-second ad is Romney's speak-to-the-camera moment; it was intended to help mitigate the fallout from his "47 percent" comments. He throws out a lot of statistics about economic woes in the United States, but his most misleading comment is about his own economic plan - that it would create 12 million jobs. As we have previously noted, that is in line with what economists think will happen - no matter who is president.

 

LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



502 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 13, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition


Direct mail still a campaign force


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1102 words


The modern political campaign has fully embraced Twitter, Facebook and other social media to reach voters, but President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney are still spending massive sums on a more traditional form of communication: snail mail.

The two presidential campaigns have spent nearly twice as much on old-fashioned fliers, get-out-the-vote cards and other forms of direct mail as they have on Internet advertising, according to disclosure data and campaign aides. The hope is to appeal to millions of baby boomers and retirees, who may prefer the familiarity of the U.S. Mail to pop-up ads, YouTube videos and other flashy media.

The only cost that outstrips mail is broadcast advertising, which is notoriously expensive and has been washing over swing states for months.

Direct mail is especially crucial for Romney, whose supporters skew older than Obama's. Romney and the Republican National Committee have spent more than $100 million on mail costs, compared with about $70 million for Obama and the Democrats.

One typical Romney mailing to seniors in Florida pledges to "preserve and strengthen Medicare" with "no change in benefits for those in or near retirement." It features an elderly couple and an older woman - all white - along with a picture of the Republican candidate and his wife, Ann.

"Florida Seniors CAN'T TRUST President Obama," the brochure reads above a picture of the president looking rather grim. It continues in capital red letters: "BARACK OBAMA HAS FAILED OUR SENIORS."

Richard Beeson, the Romney campaign's political director, said that direct mail is a central part of the campaign's outreach approach, which also includes digital strategies, phone canvassing and other methods aimed at engaging supporters.

"We are believers in voter contact," Beeson said. "There's a number of different ways to talk to voters, and the mail is one very effective way."

The use of mass direct mail in politics stretches back at least as far as George S. McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, which deployed tactics perfected by the mail-order industry. The Religious Right movement of the 1980s married sophisticated voter lists with the reach of the U.S. Postal Service to become a potent political force.

Mailings are used to attack opponents, make policy promises, solicit donations and help supporters register to vote.

"The power of it is still huge because it's reaching that age group that includes baby boomers, who are still largely more comfortable with direct mail than other, newer forms of communication," said Paul Bobnak, research director for DirectMarketingIQ, a Philadelphia-based target marketing firm that tracks campaign mailings. "It is still a huge workhorse for political fundraising and messaging."

In 2008, more than half the voters in the presidential race were 45 or older, according to exit polls. Those 65 or older went for Republican John McCain by53 percent to 45 percent, while Obama ran about even with McCain among voters aged 45 to 64, the data show.

Effective and inexpensive

For many congressional candidates, trade unions and interest groups, direct mail offers a particularly effective, and inexpensive, way to reach supporters.

Last week, the AFL-CIO labor confederation sent out 150,000 mailers to its Ohio members attacking Romney and GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel; the same households later received robocalls repeating the messages.

"Our testing shows that union members spend more time reading and recall more info from our mail program than just general mail from campaigns," said Ohio AFL-CIO spokesman Mike Gillis.

The Obama campaign has used mailings aimed at women, Latinos, pet owners and a host of other demographic subgroups, part of the campaign's sometimes obsessive use of micro-targeting. But Obama has also used mailings to press broader themes in key battlegrounds, including sharp-edged attacks on Romney's wealth, tax policies and history as a private equity fund manager.

Obama pamphlets that poured into Ohio in recent weeks featured images of Romney's oceanside manse in California and a stretch limousine with a fake license plate reading "ROMNEY 1ST."

One leaflet shows Romney piloting his luxury powerboat near his lakeside home in New Hampshire, first facing one direction and then another. The images seem to echo a famous 2004 Republican television ad that showed Democrat John F. Kerry switching back and forth as he windsurfed, which was supposed to symbolize flip-flopping and elitism.

"A NEW $250,000 Tax Cut For Multi-Millionaires - Like Himself. But up to $2,000 in Tax Hikes on Families Like Yours," the caption on the Obama powerboat mailing reads. "Not so fast, Mitt."

The Obama campaign declined to discuss its direct-mail strategy.

Under the radar

Unlike television ads, which are widely analyzed by the media, political mailings fly under the radar into voters' mailboxes, rarely getting much notice unless they are particularly provocative. A recent 10-page "voter survey" from the conservative Faith and Freedom Foundation accused Obama of having "Communist beliefs" and compared his policies to the danger posed by Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.

One of the most unusual postal pitches to emerge this year came from the Romney campaign, which mailed fliers to voters in Northern Virginia hawking the candidate's commitment to battling Lyme disease, which it called "a massive epidemic threatening Virginia." The message may be linked to a meeting Romney had with a Virginia Republican who believes in chronic Lyme disease, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says does not exist.

"That's something that's very important to the folks in Fairfax County," Beeson said, referring to Lyme disease. "The Obama campaign made light of it, and that's fine, but at the end of the day we will talk about things that are important to people in the state."

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, said direct mail remains a linchpin of the organization's strategy. Mail "is especially good for reaching senior citizens" and works well for complex issues such as health care, he said.

But Phillips also said mailings must be coupled with telephone banks, e-mail, broadcast ads and other approaches to break through the media noise.

"The message environment today is so much faster and so much more cluttered than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago," he said. "There is no silver bullet. You better be touching people through multiple mediums, multiple times. The goal is to have a presence in all of them."

eggend@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



503 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 13, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition


BYLINE: - Sean Sullivan


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 448 words


Are Senate candidate debates making a difference?

Senate candidates are debating each other with increasing frequency as Election Day nears. While the debates have proved unique opportunities for candidates to pitch their politics, policies and personalities, the set-tos haven't dramatically shifted momentum in the races.

Take Massachusetts, home to the cycle's highest-profile Senate race. Sen. Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) have debated three times and will meet once more Oct. 30. Polling shows that most voters are tuning in. But neither Brown nor Warren has decisively used the debates for an advantage.

More than six in 10 (61 percent) of those likeliest to vote had seen or heard at least one of the first two debates, according to a Western New England University survey conducted late last month and early this month. Among those voters, about as many said they were more likely to vote for Brown (30 percent) as for Warren (31 percent), based on the debate they most recently saw or heard. Thirty-seven percent said the debate didn't make a difference.

While the first two Brown-Warren sessions were filled with heated exchanges and one-liners, neither candidate committed a huge gaffe; nor did either candidate dominate the other. So it's not difficult to see why the first couple of meetings turned out as draws.

But in another contest in which there was a memorable misstep during a debate, it wasn't an end-all-be-all campaign moment.

In Virginia, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine stole the spotlight at his Sept. 20 debate against former senator George Allen (R), but not the way his campaign wanted to see him do it. Kaine's remark that he would be open to "some minimum tax level for everyone" forced a post-debate explanation and became fodder for an Allen attack ad five days later.

On its own, the debate hasn't appeared enough to propel Allen into the lead, however. The Virginia race remains close - and has been all cycle - with most polls after the Sept. 20 meeting showing Kaine leading Allen by single digits.

At the presidential level, Mitt Romney's debate performance last week was widely praised, and Republicans moved quickly to cast the campaign anew in the days that followed. Democrats, meanwhile, were forced to explain the president's performance. That's not something we're likely to see at the Senate level, even after debates as one-sided as the first Romney-Obama meeting.

Why? For one thing, presidential debates simply attract more attention and generate more media coverage. The pomp and circumstance not to mention the audience surrounding a presidential debate could never be matched at the Senate level.

- Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



504 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 13, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition


Airwaves flooded as race for president nears its end


BYLINE: Dan Eggen;T.W. Farnam


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 984 words


Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his allies are banking heavily on a high-risk, high-reward media strategy in the final weeks of the campaign, hoping that burying President Obama in ads will give them a crucial edge on Election Day.

Ad purchases in the presidential race doubled or in some cases tripled last week in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia, tracking data show. The surge is being driven by Romney and well-funded allies, who decided against running more ads earlier in the campaign in favor of a big bang at the end.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC dedicated to helping Romney, has booked $14 million worth of ads in nine states for the final week of October - more than it spent on ads during the month of September. The group is also ramping up its spending, airing a mix of ads criticizing Obama and extolling Romney in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

Charles R. Spies, the super PAC's treasurer, said conservative groups "have been very effective in leveling the playing field" with Obama. "That effort will continue at an increasing level going forward," he said.

The GOP effort has gained momentum with Romney's advance in the polls since last week's presidential debate in Denver, where Obama turned in a widely panned performance. The Oct. 3 event sparked an influx of donations to Romney's campaign and to conservative groups supporting him, giving them more resources for the final push, strategists said.

The ramped-up advertising by Republicans left Obama behind his GOP foes in total ad expenditures last week for the first time since the summer, although he has massive cash reserves after raising $181 million in September. Obama and his key outside ally, the Priorities USA Action super PAC, have kept up a steady barrage of ads attacking Romney in Ohio and other battlegrounds.

Democrats and even some Republicans argue that the Romney team, particularly the campaign itself, wasted a key opportunity by ceding the ad advantage to Obama from late August through September, which coincided with a boost in the polls for the president.

Brad Todd, a Republican media strategist, said he suspects that the big push at the end is designed to reach voters displeased with Obama but unwilling to embrace Romney - fence-sitters who have delayed making up their minds.

"Advertising at the end typically makes the biggest difference to those voters," Todd said.

Since the Republican convention in late August, the Obama side has run 28 percent more ads than Romney and all the groups behind him combined, according to estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG. Democrats spent slightly more than Republicans during that time, taking advantage of rules mandating cheaper ad time for campaigns and also seeking out less-expensive airtime at different times of day.

But Romney and GOP groups are now flooding the airwaves in force, spending about 50 percent more on ads than Obama this week, according to tracking data. The surge comes at a fortuitous time for Romney, who is now even or ahead of Obama in many national and swing-state polls.

The Romney campaign declined to discuss its ad strategy in detail. An aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal plans said the campaign is likely to increase its volume further as Election Day approaches.

The Obama campaign also declined to comment.

The final 31 / 2 weeks of ad spending is likely to be the most concentrated in U.S. political history, in part because the field of battle is narrowly focused on nine key swing states. CMAG, the ad tracking firm, estimated Friday that about half as many television markets feature presidential campaign ads this year compared with 2008, even though the volume has skyrocketed.

Recent spending figures show a surprising move of resources into Florida, the biggest ad battleground, with 10 media markets and some of the most-expensive airtime in the country. In the first week of October, $1 of every $4 spent by the Obama campaign on broadcast advertising went to Florida; for the American Crossroads super PAC and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, nearly $1 of every $3 was spent there.

Obama and Romney have gone up and down in Sunshine State polls in recent months, with the president posting strong numbers before the Denver debate but Romney gaining since.

The two sides have spent more than $100 million on ads in the state, with a slight advantage to Republicans.

Tad Devine, a top Democratic strategist, argues that in Florida, the Obama campaign "forced Romney to defend what should have been a Republican state."

Florida is followed closely in combined spending by Virginia ($96 million through last Sunday), Ohio ($93 million) and North Carolina ($70 million), CMAG estimates show.

Small interest groups are also getting into the mix. The American Energy Alliance will air $2 million worth of TV and radio ads in coal-country states through early November attacking Obama's energy policies, according to spokesman Benjamin Cole.

Many strategists expect the tone of many ads to change markedly during the final stretch as the campaigns shift from attacking each other to presenting a "closing argument" for their election. But that time has not quite arrived, as attack ads still dominate.

The Obama camp rolled out a pair of ads Friday attacking Romney for his stand on contraception services and his defense of paying a 14 percent tax rate on $20 million in personal income. "Lower tax rates for him than us," the spot says. "Is that the way to grow America?"

Romney, meanwhile, is bombarding battlegrounds with ads attacking Obama's economic policies. Restore Our Future is running $6 million worth of spots focused on unemployment in Florida, Iowa and Virginia.

"We're told we're going forward, even as we fall further behind," the ad's narrator says. "This is the new normal. This is President Obama's economy."

eggend@washpost.com

farnamt@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



505 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 13, 2012 Saturday
Regional Edition


Pinning down political facts


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A13


LENGTH: 410 words


The Oct. 6 front-page article "Report deprives Romney of a magic number" unfortunately played into the apocryphal claim that President Obama promised that the unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent if his stimulus was put into place. He never made that promise.

The article gave short shrift to the disclaimers in Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein's economic report, where the 8 percent figure originated, stating simply that the report had "caveats." The article failed to note that the crucial caveats included, first, a warning that the data on which the report relied did not include the final quarter of George W. Bush's presidency, which was unavailable at the time, and, second, the awareness that the unknown data might significantly change the projections.

Furthermore, the article's assertion that the Obama team "had not understood" the economic debacle Bush left implies a misreading of the state of the economy. Obama's circle had not "understood" that sad legacy because it was unknowable, since the crucial data from that legacy did not yet exist.

Skeptics might ask themselves: If the Republicans actually had a video of Barack Obama promising that the unemployment rate would not exceed 8 percent, wouldn't they be plastering that video nonstop on commercials nationwide?

Steven Rebarber, Bethesda

l

Glenn Kessler's Oct. 7 Fact Checker column ["Is Obama correct in his assertion that tax cuts, 'trickle-down policies' led to the economic crisis?"] assessed two Obama campaign ads that slam "trickle-down policies" proposed by Mitt Romney as the same policies that led to the economic crisis. Since not enough facts are in the ads, Kessler researched, opined and inferred the meaning of words in the ads such as "led," "trickle-down," "crisis" and "policies."

Although I don't think Kessler reached unreasonable conclusions as to the meanings of these words, I disagree with some of them - particularly for "trickle-down policies," which I think include several policy sets that increase wealth and income disparity. His analysis followed such a tortured path, focusing on broad, ambiguous and even ideological terms, that he should have abandoned it as "too hard" before assigning three Pinocchios.

This is not to say that the ads' claims cannot be disputed, as they surely are by those from the opposite governing ideology. But the Fact Checker should stick to assessing stated facts that can be readily verified.

Jay Fadgen, Falls Church


LOAD-DATE: October 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



506 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 12, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


A Bounce for Romney, But Just How High?


BYLINE: By NATE SILVER


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; FIVETHIRTYEIGHT; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 2659 words


Polling since the debate in Denver last week has generally been very strong for Mitt Romney. But there have also been a couple of rays of hope for Democrats and President Obama.

One hypothesis is that Mr. Romney's debate bounce was initially very strong, but has since faded some. There is a case to be made for this - but Wednesday's polling made it weaker.

Although Mr. Romney's standing declined by two points in the Gallup national tracking poll, he improved slightly in four other tracking surveys, from Rasmussen Reports, Ipsos, Investors' Business Daily and the RAND Corporation. And the state polling data that came in on Wednesday was generally consistent with about a three-and-a-half-point bounce for Mr. Romney, similar to previous days.

There is some spotty evidence that Mr. Romney's bounce may have been as large as five or six points in polls conducted in the 48 hours after the debate, so perhaps the most recent data does reflect something of a comedown for him. But if his bounce started out at five or six points and has now settled in at three or four, that would still reflect an extremely profound swing in the race - consistent with the largest shifts produced by past presidential debates. We'll see what happens once the news cycle turns over, such as after Thursday's vice-presidential debate.

For the time being, however, Mr. Romney continues to rocket forward in our projections. The forecast model now gives him about a one-in-three chance of winning the Electoral College (more specifically, a 32.1 percent chance), his highest figure since Aug. 22 and more than double his chances from before the debate. Mr. Romney may have increased his chances of becoming president by 15 or 20 percent based on one night in Denver.The more troubling sign for Mr. Romney, however, is that although he's made gains, he does not seem to have taken the lead in very many state polls. That trend, if anything, has become more entrenched. Of the half-dozen or so polls of battleground states published on Wednesday, none showed Mr. Romney ahead; the best result he managed was a 48-48 tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll of New Hampshire.

(We ran the model on Wednesday before the latest polls from Marist College, The Philadelphia Inquirer, or The New York Times, Quinnipiac University and CBS News were published overnight, which were also suggestive of a narrow advantage for Mr. Obama in the majority of swing states.)

How to reconcile this against the fact that Mr. Romney is about tied - or perhaps even has a small lead - in the average of national polls right now?

From a forecasting standpoint, this is the question that the whole election may turn upon. There are basically four ways to explain the difference.

1) This is a statistical quirk that will work its way out of the system.2) Mr. Obama has some pronounced advantage in the Electoral College relative to his position in the popular vote.3) The state polls systematically overestimate Mr. Obama and underestimate Mr. Romney.4) The national polls systematically overestimate Mr. Romney and underestimate Mr. Obama.

Could State-National Differences Be a Statistical Fluke?

The first proposal - that this simply reflects statistical noise - may be part of the answer, but I don't know that it's a sufficient explanation on its own. Since the Denver debate, there have been on the order of 12,000 people surveyed in national polls, and a similar number in the battleground states. The theoretical margin of error on a 12,000-person sample is about 1.8 percent in reflecting the difference between the two candidates.

If it just so happens that the set of national polls have been a positive outlier for Mr. Romney and the state polls have been a negative outlier for him, then perhaps you can explain the whole of the discrepancy. But that explanation would be more compelling had these differences not also been apparent for most of the election cycle.

An Electoral College-Popular Vote Split?

The second answer is the most intuitively satisfying, and would make the boldest assertion: that in an election held today, Mr. Obama would be favored to win the Electoral College but would probably lose (or at best roughly tie) the popular vote. However, there are several powerful rebuttals to it.

First, splits between the Electoral College and the popular vote are historically very uncommon.

Second, the swing states are swing states for a reason: because they resemble (certainly collectively, if not also individually) the American electorate as a whole. There are a lot of voters in the nonbattleground states who are demographically similar to those in Ohio, Florida, Virginia or Colorado. (If Mr. Obama is performing well in Ohio, then it should figure that he's also performing well with Ohio-like voters in noncompetitive neighboring states like Indiana or Kentucky, for example.) The set of swing states is also quite geographically diverse, covering almost literally the four corners of the country.

Third, the campaigns have been roughly equal in their advertising spending this year. If one campaign had an especially heavy resource advantage in the swing states (as Mr. Obama may have had in 2008), then perhaps this explanation would make more sense.

Fourth, this hypothesis depends implicitly on the idea that Mr. Obama, if he is overperforming in the swing states, must also be underperforming in the other states. Although there hasn't been much polling outside the battleground states recently, the evidence from the polling before the debate was not very supportive of this idea. If anything, for example, Mr. Obama seemed to be performing comparatively well in deeply red states, seeing little drop-off from his 2008 results. Perhaps fresher evidence will lend more credibility to this hypothesis (one poll on Wednesday showed Mr. Obama's margin falling substantially in California, for instance). But it hasn't been that convincing up to this point in time.

None of this means that this case is completely without merit. Our forecast model does infer that Mr. Obama has a very slight Electoral College advantage. (As of Wednesday, it gave him a 67.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College against a 66.7 percent chance of winning the popular vote.)

But some of our competitors are issuing forecasts suggestive of a very large difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote - to a degree that is frankly not credible, in my view. (We'll compare the FiveThirtyEight forecasts against some alternatives in a moment.)

Reasons to Prefer National Polls to State Polls

There are some reasons to prefer national polls to state polls. First, they probably come from slightly stronger polling firms on average and they often have larger sample sizes, although there are exceptions on either side.

Second, they're more straightforward to interpret - especially if you want to derive an estimate of how the national popular vote will break down. The alternative requires you to "add up" the polls from individual states, as well to estimate what share of the national turnout each state will represent.

Reasons to Prefer State Polls to National Polls

Our research suggests, however, that when the state polls and the national polls seem to tell a different story about the state of the campaign, the state polls sometimes (not always, by any means) get it right.

One case in point: national polls on the eve of the 2000 election were consistent with about a three-point lead for George W. Bush. But the collective evidence from state polling was suggestive of a nearly tied race. In fact, the conventional wisdom at that time was that Mr. Bush might win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College - exactly the opposite of the outcome that occurred.

The state polling generally told the more accurate story, however, describing a tossup race, rather than one favoring Mr. Bush.

Similarly, in 1996, most national polls showed Bill Clinton winning by double-digits, while battleground state polls seemed to suggest that he would win by a smaller amount. Mr. Clinton's actual margin of victory was eight and a half percentage points, more in line with the state polling.

What advantages do state polls have? One is just that there are more of them. No, there aren't more Virginia polls than there are national polls. But among Virginia and Ohio and Colorado and the other 47 states, there are quite a lot more. So even if the typical state poll is slightly less accurate the typical national poll, the collective sum of state polls may be more worthwhile than the collective sum of national polls.

Also, the state polls come from a more diverse set of polling firms, and may provide for a greater degree of independence.

What do I mean by "independence"? Here's a dirty little secret: pollsters herd. Or to put it less politely: it's probable that some polling firms, especially those that use less rigorous methodologies, cheat off the stronger ones - seeing what the consensus results are before weighing in on their own.

One piece of evidence for this comes from a paper by the political scientists Joshua Clinton and Steve Rogers, who analyzed polling in the Republican primaries this year. They found that when a low-quality pollster was the first one to poll a state, their results were quite poor. But they did as well as any others once there were high-quality polls already released in the state - possibly implying that the low-quality pollsters were tweaking their assumptions to match the better ones.

My own research is suggestive of a similar phenomenon. I've found that the more polls there are of a state, the narrower the spread between them - in a way that is inconsistent with normal statistical variance. Once there is a consensus established in a state, the pollsters may have an incentive to be in line with it. That may make the individual poll more accurate - but reduce the value of aggregating or averaging polls since the "wisdom of crowds" principle is strongest when individual members of the crowd are behaving independently. Otherwise, it becomes more likely that everyone will miss in the same direction.

Even high-quality polling firms sometimes feel compelled to change their methods if they are out-of-step with the consensus. Gallup announced a set of changes to its methodology on Wednesday, for example. Although the changes are defensible on a theoretical basis (and although it's much better to disclose the changes than not to do so), it's awfully late in the game to be doing that, and makes it harder to compare recent Gallup results to past ones.

(Whether you like the FiveThirtyEight forecast model or not, one advantage it has is that we don't change the rules as we go along. The forecasts that you see today are from a program that we designed in the spring, before knowing how the election would play out.)

The potential advantage of state polls is that, to the extent that the pollsters herd, they're herding relative to 50 state-by-state averages rather than just one national average. So you aren't putting quite so many eggs into one basket.

Another advantage of relying more on state polls is that if you fail, you will tend to fail well. That is, if there really is a big difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote, the state polls will at least get the Electoral College winner right - and that's what determines who occupies the White House.

A Comparison of State-by-State Forecasts

Still, the case is not a slam-dunk. So what the FiveThirtyEight forecasts do is to adjust the state polls in one direction, and the national polls in the opposite one, such that they match.

(The adjustment does not necessarily cause them to meet exactly in the middle. The degree to which the program weights national polls and state polls depends on the overall volume of polling in each realm. Right now, the state polls are abundant enough that they receive somewhat more weight over all.)

So if you compare our forecasts to those of our competitors, what you'll generally find is that we are higher than the other methods on our estimate of Mr. Obama's standing in the national popular vote, but lower than the others in the individual states.

In the chart below, I've compared the results from the FiveThirtyEight "now-cast" as of Wednesday night to those issued by three other polling sites: Real Clear Politics, HuffPost Pollster and Talking Points Memo's PollTracker. The results cover the 11 battleground states that the campaigns have made a material amount of advertising expenditures in, along with each site's estimate of the national popular vote.

On average among the 11 battleground states, we show Mr. Obama with a 2.3 percentage point lead, or 1.9 percentage points as weighted by each state's turnout in 2008. Among the four methods, we have the worst figure for Mr. Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin, and the highest in none. Our average result for Mr. Obama among the 11 states is also the lowest of the four systems, although tied with RealClearPolitics if weighted by turnout.

The flip-side is that our estimate of Mr. Obama's national popular vote is the highest of the four systems: the "now-cast" shows him one and a half percentage points ahead nationally, while HuffPost Pollster shows a tie, and the other two methods have Mr. Romney slightly ahead.

Thus, we perceive only about a half-point difference between Mr. Obama's performance in the battlegrounds and his national figures. This is similar to the actual results from 2008, when Mr. Obama won the 11 battleground states by an average of 7.7 percentage points (weighted by turnout) and the national popular vote by 7.3 points.

By contrast, Talking Points Memo has Mr. Obama three points ahead on average in the battlegrounds, but three points behind in the national popular vote - a six-point spread. Real Clear Politics shows about a three -and-a-half-point gap, while HuffPost Pollster, whose methodology is the most similar to FiveThirtyEight, has a two-point difference.

A two-point difference is within the realm of possibility, although our model would require a bit more evidence to support a difference that large (specifically, poor polling for Mr. Obama in non-battleground states relative to his polling in swing states).

But there's just no way that Mr. Obama would be even-money in the Electoral College if he were trailing in the national popular vote by four to six points.

All of this is a very long-winded way of answering the question in the headline: is Mr. Romney ahead right now? None of the systems that rely on state-level polling say that he's ahead in the Electoral College right now, although the FiveThirtyEight models perceive a slightly smaller Electoral College gap between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama than some of the other systems.

The difference is that we, and HuffPost Pollster, are looking at the Electoral College and the popular vote in a holistic way. The evidence is ambiguous enough that it's hard to know for sure, but the fact that Mr. Obama appears to hold a lead in the Electoral College is reason to be suspicious that Mr. Romney leads in the popular vote.

But here's another way to think about the issue, returning to the competing hypothesis that we articulated earlier. If the national polls are right and the state polls are wrong, then Mr. Romney might be favored right now. If the state polls are right and the national polls are wrong, then Mr. Obama is ahead. And if you take them both very literally - meaning that Mr. Obama is ahead in the Electoral College but behind in the popular vote - then he'd win another term, after a very long election night.

Two of the three hypothesis yield an Obama win. It's something of a coincidence that our model now shows Mr. Obama with almost exactly a 2-in-3 chance of winning (as do Vegas betting lines), but it isn't the worst way to think about the election.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/oct-10-is-romney-leading-right-now/


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



507 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 12, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Romney's Pledge Puts Focus on Public TV


BYLINE: By BRIAN STELTER and ELIZABETH JENSEN


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 978 words


It has been a strange week for public television executives. Meetings have been postponed. Trips have been canceled. And conversations have turned in urgency to, of all things, Big Bird.

The turn of events can be traced to Mitt Romney's pledge at the Oct. 3 presidential debate to ''stop the subsidy to PBS,'' and the subsequent political jousting between him and President Obama over the fate of the iconic ''Sesame Street'' character. The give-and-take has brought new attention to the public financing of television and radio and has elevated it to an election issue, much to the dismay of PBS and local stations that say they are nonpartisan and would like to stay that way.

The public broadcasting budget has long been a target of Republicans in Congress, most famously when Newt Gingrich called for the privatization of PBS in 1994. Paula A. Kerger, the PBS chief executive, however, said she could not recall a time when a presidential candidate had opposed the financing in so public a forum. ''We sprang into action quickly,'' said Ms. Kerger, who ''dropped everything'' the day after the debate to answer questions from the news media.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns see political advantages in the conversation over whether the government should help pay for radio and television programming. It allows Mr. Romney to portray himself as a budget-cutter and appeal to conservatives who believe that public media programs have a liberal bias; it allows Mr. Obama, in turn, to mock Mr. Romney's proposal and appeal to voters who oppose cuts to public broadcasting.

The public television executives caught in the middle say the issue is drawing far more attention than it truly merits.

''We would very much like to be out of the picture as soon as possible,'' said Patrick Butler, the head of the main lobbying group for public television stations. ''We think there are more important issues for presidential candidates to talk about than our little funding issue here.''

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received $445 million from the government this year, about two-thirds of which was granted directly to local television and radio stations. The rest was spent on grants for programming and administrative costs. The total amount is about one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget, contradicting the widely held belief that public broadcasting represents 1 percent or more.

The campaign trail comments about public broadcasting this week have made ''folks more aware of how small the number is and how deep the appreciation of public television is,'' said Rich Homberg, president and general manager of Detroit Public Television, where federal funds account for about 7 percent of revenues.

Several station managers said they had been struck by the outpouring of support on social media Web sites and in phone calls from viewers.

A sarcastic ad by the Obama campaign on Tuesday that mocked Mr. Romney's mention of Big Bird gained more than 2.1 million views on YouTube as of Thursday evening, more than any single Romney ad on YouTube to date. After its release, the Republican National Committee asserted that Mr. Obama had made '' 'Sesame Street' characters the cornerstone of his campaign.''

The back-and-forth may foreshadow a Congressional fight over financing for public broadcasting next year. Stations have been girding for such a fight by generating an online campaign, 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, a reference to the combined monthly reach of all the stations.

Nationwide, the $445 million in federal funds accounts for about 15 percent of public broadcasters' overall revenue, with donations and other sources making up the rest. Smaller television and radio stations depend more heavily on the subsidies; a report commissioned by Congress this year found that the elimination of federal funds would leave 54 public television stations and 76 public radio stations, most in rural areas, ''at high risk of no longer being able to sustain operations.''

While some viewers could rely on the Web in place of those stations, PBS says it serves many poor and rural households that cannot afford broadband Internet connections or cable television.

Peter Morrill, the general manager of Idaho Public Television, said the $1 million he receives annually, out of a $6 million budget, is ''absolutely critical to our ability to provide service to a very rural state.''

Mr. Romney, in an interview with The Des Moines Register on Tuesday, said he enjoyed PBS, singling out the anthology program ''Masterpiece,'' which he called by its former name, ''Masterpiece Theater.'' But he said the system's programming ''will do just fine whether or not there's federal subsidy'' and brought up Big Bird's home: ''The people from 'Sesame Street' have made it clear that Big Bird is quite profitable, doesn't need the government subsidy.''

''Sesame Street'' is produced by Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit. It receives money from several government agencies for its international production and domestic outreach work. But ''Sesame Street'' directly receives only $4 million a year from PBS. The group returns about $2.5 million to PBS through an arrangement that shares revenues from merchandising and other income streams, making the net cost to taxpayers $1.5 million.

But Sesame Workshop also depends on PBS for distribution, and PBS in turn depends on federal funds to keep local stations running. ''Let's have a conversation about that,'' said Melvin Ming, the Sesame Workshop chief executive.

With Big Bird still in the news last Saturday, Mr. Ming canceled a long-planned overseas trip. He sensed that Big Bird was unlikely to fade into obscurity this month, with two more presidential debates to go, not to mention Halloween. This month, Google searches for ''Big Bird costume'' soared to their highest monthly level in at least eight years.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/us/politics/romneys-pledge-puts-public-television-in-spotlight.html


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A protester dressed as Big Bird in Delaware, Ohio. At the Oct. 3 debate against President Obama, Mitt Romney vowed to ''stop the subsidy to PBS.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



508 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 12, 2012 Friday


JPMorgan Beats Expectations


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 1555 words



HIGHLIGHT: JPMorgan Chase kicked off bank earnings season, announcing a 34 percent rise in profit. | Paul E. Singer, the head of Elliott Management, "may have met his match." | When Timothy F. Geithner wants insight into Wall Street, he often turns to the head of BlackRock. | Workday is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange.


JPMORGAN PROFIT RISES 34%  |  Bank earnings kick off Friday morning with JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. With the broad economy showing signs of recovery, we'll soon find out whether banks are feeling beneficial effects. Investors can expect the usual buzzwords - uncertainty, weak global economic conditions, the cost of new regulation - as banks explain their results.

Big consumer banks stand to benefit as the housing market gradually improves from the financial crisis. A surge in mortgage refinancing is helping the banks' bread-and-butter lending business, making up for weakness in other areas, writes DealBook's Peter Eavis. Government assistance for homeowners, combined with low interest rates, is producing a "windfall for banks," Mr. Eavis says.

Indeed, JPMorgan Chase said on Friday it originated $47 billion worth of mortgages in the third quarter, an increase of 29 percent from last year. Over all, the bank - which surpassed expectations - earned $5.7 billion, compared with $4.3 billion a year earlier. "We believe the housing market has turned the corner," said Jamie Dimon, the chief executive. JPMorgan on Friday also gave an update on its disastrous London whale trade, saying it amounted to a "modest loss" in the quarter. The bank is holding its conference call at 8:30 a.m.

Wells Fargo is up next, reporting its third-quarter results at 8 a.m. Analysts expect the bank to earn 87 cents a share, compared with 72 cents a share last year.

CLASH OF THE VULTURES  | 
Paul E. Singer, the head of Elliott Management, is used to butting heads with corporate boards and political leaders, but the hedge fund manager "may have met his match" in David Martinez, a secretive Mexican financier who is opposing him in a struggle over Vitro, a troubled glass company, writes DealBook's Azam Ahmed. "Elliott and allied investors contend that Mr. Martinez helped the Mexican company muscle investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars through financial sleight of hand." The case could have broader implications for international investing. Vitro's bankruptcy plan, which imposes losses on bondholders rather than shareholders, "has sent ripples through the Mexican debt market," Mr. Ahmed says.

In another battle, Mr. Singer seems to have the edge. A court in Ghana ruled that his hedge fund can hold on to the Argentine navy ship that it recently seized as part of an effort to collect on Argentine government debt.

GEITHNER PHONES A FRIEND  |  When Timothy F. Geithner wants insight into Wall Street, the Treasury secretary often turns to Laurence D. Fink, the head of BlackRock. "The two men spoke on at least 49 separate occasions, an average of about once every 11 days" during an 18-month period, according to The Financial Times.

ON THE AGENDA  |  Workday is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, after pricing its I.P.O. above the expected range. A human resources software company, Workday sold shares at $28 apiece, for a valuation of nearly $4.5 billion. Stephen A. Wynn of Wynn Resorts is appearing on CNBC at 7:40 a.m. Timothy J. Sloan, Wells Fargo's chief financial officer, is on CNBC at 3:10 p.m.

New rules for certain derivatives go into effect today, a change that one columnist said was "as important as when the 1930s securities laws went into force." The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for October is released at 9:55 a.m.

TPG ABANDONS BILLABONG BID  | 
The second time isn't sweeter for TPG. The buyout firm walked away from a $714 million offer for Billabong International, marking its second failed attempt this year to take over the Australian surf wear company. Billabong's shares fell as much as 19 percent in Sydney trading on Friday, reaching a record low.

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Sprint Says It Is in Negotiations With SoftBank of Japan  |  The deal would give Sprint, the struggling American cellphone service provider, a backer able to help finance its latest turnaround.
DealBook »

Larry Ellison Is Said to Consider Anschutz Entertainment  |  Reuters reports that the billionaire is "interested in a potential bid" for the sports and entertainment company, which could fetch around $10 billion.
REUTERS

Icahn Bids to Take Control of Oshkosh Truck  |  Carl C. Icahn escalated his proxy fight with the vehicle maker Oshkosh Corporation on Thursday by offering to take over the company for $32.50 a share, or about $3 billion.
DealBook »

The Fallout From the Failed Aerospace Deal  |  After talks between EADS and BAE collapsed, the chief executive of EADS now "risks further straining relations" with the German government, Bloomberg News writes.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Debt Investors Consider Options for AMR  |  As the parent company of American Airlines works through bankruptcy, a group of bondholders is said to be "open to a merger with US Airways Group," The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Owners of Champion Technologies Said to Pursue a Sale  |  The family that controls the chemical maker is said to be seeking $2 billion in a sale, Bloomberg News reports.

BLOOMBERG NEWS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Morgan Stanley E-Mails Reveal Doubts About a Deal  |  Executives at Morgan Stanley warned about the stability of a structured investment vehicle that later went bad, "according to e-mails cited by investors who were sold $100 million of the fund's notes just days after the warning," Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Blankfein Adds to Warnings About 'Fiscal Cliff'  |  Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief of Goldman Sachs, warned in an interview on Thursday on CNBC that the fiscal cliff threatens to derail the economic recovery.
DealBook »

More Support to Limit Bank Size  |  James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, supported an argument made by the Fed governor Daniel K. Tarullo.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Which Banks Would Be Affected?  |  After a Fed official said Congress should consider limiting the size of big banks, The Wall Street Journal shows which firms might be affected by such a plan. The results are not surprising.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Chinese Banks Said to Resist Lowering Borrowing Rates  |  
BLOOMBERG NEWS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Bain Capital to Buy Call Center Business for $1.3 Billion  |  The private equity firm co-founded by the United States presidential candidate Mitt Romney has agreed to buy the call center unit of the European telecoms giant Telefónica for $1.3 billion.
DealBook »

Carlyle Granted More Time for Chemring Deal  |  
REUTERS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Third Point Gets Approval to Buy Stake in Murphy Oil  |  
REUTERS

Prince Dines With Hedge Fund Women  |  Prince William of Britain visited a gala for the charity 100 Women in Hedge Funds Philanthropic Initiatives, according to USA Today.
USA TODAY

Asia-Focused Fund Isolates Certain Assets  |  Senrigan Capital, which is backed by the Blackstone Group, has created a separate vehicle for certain assets that sustained losses, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Pondering Zynga's Fate  |  With Zynga's stock trading at low values, there's an argument to be made that Facebook should consider buying the company, The Wall Street Journal writes.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Realogy Surges in Trading Debut  |  Realogy Holdings and Shutterstock rose in their first hours on the public market, defying a broader sense of uncertainty surrounding new listings.
DealBook »

VENTURE CAPITAL »

How the Presidential Candidates Would Help Start-Ups  |  President Obama and Mitt Romney responded to questions from NYCTechMeetUp, a group representing technology industry people in New York.
NEW YORK TIMES BITS

Twitter's Urban Edge?  |  According to Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief executive, the company is "gritty like the city."
ALLTHINGSD

Solar Panel Industry Looks to Limit Imports  |  The New York Times writes: "The solar panel manufacturing industry in the United States and Europe has begun a volley of trade cases against imports, following the same track as the steel industry before it - and for many of the same reasons."
NEW YORK TIMES

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Former Guggenheim Trader Accused of Hiding a Loss  |  A former managing director at Guggenheim Securities, Alexander Rekeda, who was accused of concealing a trading loss on a collateralized loan obligation, was fined and suspended on Thursday by regulators.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Taking Stock of Dodd-Frank  |  Bloomberg Businessweek writes that Dodd-Frank has "worked, but it's also left holes some argue have made the system more vulnerable."
BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Retailers Challenge Settlement With Card Companies  |  After reaching a $6 billion settlement with Visa and MasterCard, more than half of the retailers and trade groups that filed the underlying lawsuit say they have problems with the deal, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ex-Goldman Programmer Seeks Dismissal of Charges  |  A lawyer for Sergey Aleynikov argued that his client could not be tried a second time under similar charges, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

First Black Member of Fed Board Dies  |  Andrew F. Brimmer, who "led efforts to to reverse the country's balance-of-payments deficit," died at 86, The New York Times writes.
NEW YORK TIMES

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 15, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



509 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 12, 2012 Friday


Ryan Joins Criticism of Administration on Libya Attack


BYLINE: TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 631 words



HIGHLIGHT: Representative Paul D. Ryan also condemned the possibility of ending production of M1 tanks at a plant in Ohio.


LANCASTER, Ohio -- Representative Paul D. Ryan joined Mitt Romney in criticizing President Obama on Friday over the attack in Benghazi, Libya, adding another turn of the screw to an indictment of the administration's evolving explanation of events.

"First they blame a YouTube video and a nonexistent riot,'' Mr. Ryan told a throng of supporters here, at his first public appearance since his debate with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday night in Danville, Ky. "Then when the country's getting upset about it, they blame Romney and Ryan for getting people upset about it.''

"They keep changing their story,'' he added. "This is not what leadership looks like.''

Earlier in the day, Mr. Romney attacked Mr. Biden for asserting in the debate that the administration never received requests for greater security at the diplomatic outpost where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Two security officials testified before a House committee on Wednesday that they asked for more officers, but were turned down by the State Department.

Pressed to explain the discrepancy, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that the State Department handled security at its outposts and that Mr. Biden meant only that he and Mr. Obama had not known of the requests.

"We need clarity, not confusion,'' Mr. Ryan said here. "We need accountability and no more excuses. This tragedy would be troubling in and of itself, and tragic of itself, but unfortunately what we are witnessing when we turn on our TVs on a daily basis is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.''

Mr. Ryan, who appeared on an outdoor stage in the center of town with Mr. Romney at his side, linked international events to the most local of interests, seizing on another comment of Mr. Biden's in the debate that the Pentagon sought to make a transition to a leaner, smaller Army.

"We don't need more M1 tanks, what we need is more U.A.V's," Mr. Biden said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones.

As it happens, production of the M1 tank is based in Lima, Ohio, and Mr. Ryan raised the threat of job losses here in what may be the hardest-fought of all battleground states.

"When you say it's O.K. to impose these devastating cuts in our military or we don't need any more Lima-built M1 tanks,'' Mr. Ryan said, "what we are doing is we're projecting weakness.''

The Romney-Ryan campaign also released a radio ad in central and northwestern Ohio accusing Mr. Biden of wanting "to take away one of the most vital weapons in our arsenal -- made right here in Ohio.''

And Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, an adviser to Mr. Romney who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that the M1 supported 800 jobs in Lima.

Mr. Romney will spend another full day campaigning in Ohio on Saturday. He worked a local angle of his own when he spoke after Mr. Ryan. He told the large crowd of an unusual connection he had to Lancaster.

"My very first assignment at my first job was to come to Lancaster. I'm serious," he said. "And try to do a little work at a little company called Anchor Hocking,'' a maker of glass tableware. Mr. Romney was apparently referring to his work fresh out of Harvard Business School working for the Boston Consulting Company.

He recalled "standing next to those big glass furnaces" and learning about "triple gob machines" at the glass works.

"It's good to be back,'' he said, cognizant that all politics - tanks or casserole dishes - is local.



LOAD-DATE: October 15, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



510 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 12, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION


Funding Seasame Street vs. Wall Street


SECTION: EDIT; Pg. 11A


LENGTH: 192 words


During first presidential debate, Mitt Romney stated he loved Big Bird, but would cut funding to PBS .

Let's do the math -- $26 million for PBS and $650 billion for defense. Yup, that cut to PBS will really make a difference in the budget. To hell with educational programming for kids. We need more guns and bombs.

Chris Sadler

There is much about PBS that is exceptional. However in numerous ways it represents a very singular mindset of liberal ideology. This can be seen (when viewed objectively) in the news and other programs. PBS is no longer a non-commercial enterprise. Aside from intense fundraising, PBS has had commercial sponsors for years. Is that fair to other broadcast venues?

Harry Martin

I wish Obama would talk about securing our embassies around the world as much as he talks about securing Sesame Street.

@CharlieDaniels

As a PBS fan, I still say we should not borrow from China to fund PBS.

@bibliomama5

Presidential job approval rating: 30%. Sesame Street is losing to Main Street.

@souperfan2012

Again I say if people like PBS enough to watch the programs, they will donate to keep it going. I do. Why shouldn't everyone else?

@Parlay1992


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: graphic Matt Sayles, AP


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



511 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 12, 2012 Friday 9:18 PM EST


Ad watch: Obama targets Romney on birth control


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 103 words


Obama for America, "Decision"

What it says: "When it comes to protecting your access to birth control, and the basic women's health care services Planned Parenthood provides, one thing we must remember is this. Mitt Romney: 'I'll cut off funding to Planned Parenthood.' "

What it means: President Obama is strengthening his hold on female voters - particularly unmarried women, who polling suggests were unimpressed by his debate performance - by painting Romney as anti-contraception. 

Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



512 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 12, 2012 Friday 8:56 PM EST


Why Senate debates matter - and our latest rankings!


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 1450 words


Senate candidates are debating one another with increasing frequency as Election Day nears, giving voters more chances to compare their options alongside one another. While the debates have proven unique opportunities for candidates to pitch their politics, policies, and personalities, the set-tos haven't dramatically shifted momentum to one side or the other. 

To explore why, let's start in Massachusetts, home to the cycle's highest-profile Senate race. Sen. Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) have debated three times and will meet once more on Oct. 30. Polling shows that most voters are tuning in. But neither Brown nor Warren has decisively used the debates to their advantage. 

More than six-in-ten (61 percent) of those likeliest to vote had seen or heard at least one of the first two debates, according Western New England University survey conducted late last month and early this month. Among those voters, about as many said they were more likely to vote for Brown (30 percent) as for Warren (31 percent), based on the debate they most recently saw or heard. Thirty-seven percent said the debate didn't make a difference.

While the first two Brown-Warren sessions were filled with heated exchanges and one-liners, neither candidate committed a huge gaffe; nor did either candidate dominate the other. So it's not difficult to see why the first couple of meetings turned out as draws.

But even another debate in which there was a memorable misstep wasn't an end-all-be-all campaign moment.

In Virginia, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine stole the spotlight at his Sept. 20 debate against former senator George Allen (R), but not the way his campaign wanted to see him do it. Kaine's remark that he would be open to "some minimum tax level for everyone" forced a post-debate explanation and became fodder for an Allen attack ad five days later.

On its own, the debate hasn't appeared enough to propel Allen into the lead, however. The Virginia race remains close - and has been all cycle - with most polls after the Sept. 20 meeting showing Kaine leading Allen by single digits.

On Thursday, Senate candidates debated in Nevada, New Mexico and Connecticut (The Hotline rounds up the coverage here). There were no real earth-shattering moments at any of the three. 

At the presidential level, Mitt Romney's debate performance last week was widely praised, and Republicans moved quickly to cast the campaign anew in the days that followed. Democrats, meanwhile, were forced to explain the president's performance. That's not something we're likely to see at the Senate level, even after debates as one-sided as the first Romney-Obama meeting.

Why? For one thing, presidential debates simply attract more attention and generate more media coverage. The pomp and circumstance not to mention the audience surrounding a presidential debate could never be matched at the Senate level.

The constant, from-all-angles post-game dissection that tends to shape the aftermath of presidential debate simply isn't often found in state races. Local networks and papers cover the Senate debates, often with great breadth and depth, but it's a matter of 10 stories versus hundreds; two or three minutes in a local news broadcast versus days worth of national coverage on cable.

All that said, statewide debates shouldn't be dismissed as mere background noise in Senate landscape. Warren and Brown have drawn some clear contrasts between one another on policy and personality. In Wednesday night's debate between Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D), the candidates made some actual news - Carmona on health care and Flake on signing pledges.

Benign as most statewide debates are, each one carries the risk of blowing up into a national story. Case in point: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) (extended) awkward silence at a 2010 debate.

And now, to our rankings of the 10 Senate seats most likely to change parties in 25 days. As always, these races are rated from most likely to flip - No. 1 - to least likely - No. 10.)

To the Line!

10. Connecticut (Democratic-controlled): The latest Quinnipiac poll showed Republican Linda McMahon and Rep. Chris Murphy (D) running about even. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's air offensive has had time to marinate since we last ranked the Senate races, underscoring the competitiveness of this race. At the same time, it's bad news for McMahon that she has to contend against a new foe on the airwaves. To be clear, this race remains a climb for Republicans (Obama led Romney by 12 points in the Quinnipiac poll, meaning McMahon might have to outrun the top of the ticket by 15 points) but its not settled yet. (Previous ranking: 10)

9. Indiana (Republican-controlled): Rep. Joe Donnelly (D) has done exactly what national Democrats have asked for - keep this contest within range for the final stretch run. A bipartisan survey released last last month showed the race is about even, and Mourdock's partisan posture during the primary isn't helping him these days. Right now, he could use a hand from the man he defeated - Sen. Richard Lugar (R). But he's not going to get one, since Lugar's shut the door on the possibility of stumping with his onetime opponent. (Previous ranking: 9)

8. Nevada (R): A Suffolk University poll released Thursday showed Sen. Dean Heller (R) with a small lead over Rep. Shelley Berkley (D). Overall, this race remains very tight. Can Heller run ahead of Romney in Nevada? That's the question for Republicans, as the Suffolk poll showed the Republican presidential nominee trailing Obama by a slim margin. (Previous ranking: 8)

7. Virginia (D): Despite Kaine's rough debate against Allen on Sept. 20, most recent polls show the Democrat with a single-digit lead over Allen. Two different polls released Thursday told two different stories, but Kaine can't be disappointed about his showing in either. (Previous ranking: 6)

6. Wisconsin (D): Democrats really took advantage of the three weeks after the mid-August primary, which left onetime frontrunning former governor Tommy Thompson (R) bruised and in need of financial reinforcements. They pounced on the airwaves, boosting Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) against the well-known Republican. Now, the race looks about even with 3 and a half weeks to go. (Previous ranking: 5)

5. Massachusetts (R): Warren was largely on offense at Wednesday night's debate. More notably, neither Brown nor the moderator raised the issue of her Native American heritage, which could be fading as a focal point in the contest, at least for now. Both candidates have begun attacking each other over the airwaves in earnest, and the net result has been polls that have mainly showed Warren with a slight advantage. (Previous ranking: 7)

4. Montana (D): Could a race be more even? All cycle long, poll after poll has showed Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) in a tie. Tester is facing tougher odds compared to other Class of 2006 Democrats, like Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), but he's hanging tough in a state where Romney is the odds-on favorite at the top of the ballot. (Previous ranking: 4)

3. North Dakota (D): Mason-Dixon found this race to be deadlocked at 47 percent earlier this month. Heidi Heitkamp (D) has proven to be a more than capable contender against Rep. Rick Berg (R) in this increasingly Republican state. National Republicans' move to reinforce the effort in North Dakota late in the summer underscores how crucial a pickup opportunity this is for the GOP in the race for the majority. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Maine (R): Since our last round of rankings, the Senate Democratic campaign arm has joined its GOP counterpart on the airwaves in this race. First, Republicans slammed frontrunning independent former governor Angus King. Then, Democrats responded to ding Republican nominee Charlie Summers. The real question here might be how much support Democrat Cynthia Dill can get (and how much Republicans will try to elevate her down the stretch). King is still in the driver's seat here, but his ride has grown bumpier. The increased national money this race has received has prompted us to move this from No.1 to No. 2. (Previous ranking: 1)

1. Nebraska (D): Let the speculation commence about what type of senator Deb Fischer (R) will be. Democrats' recruitment of Bob Kerrey was the best they could have hoped for when Sen. Ben Nelson (D) announced his retirement. But the former governor and senator has been no match for Fischer in this red state. (Previous ranking: 2)


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



513 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 12, 2012 Friday 8:52 PM EST


Ad watch: Obama goes after Romney's taxes again


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 77 words


Obama for America, "Economic Growth"

What it says: "Lower tax rates for him ... than us. Is that the way to grow America?"

What it means: President Obama appears to be trying to blunt GOP momentum using a strategy that's been successful in the past - attacking Mitt Romney's wealth and low tax rate. 

Who will see it: The ad will air in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



514 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 12, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


The Big Bird counterattack


BYLINE: Charles Krauthammer


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 750 words


No mystery about the trajectory of this race. It was static for months as President Obama held a marginal lead. Then came the conventions. The Republicans squandered Tampa; the Democrats got a 3- to 4-point bounce out of Charlotte.

And kept it. Until the first debate. In 90 minutes, Mitt Romney wiped out the bump - and maybe more.

Democrats are shellshocked and left searching for excuses. Start with scapegoats: the hapless John Kerry, Obama's sparring partner in the practice debates, for going too soft on the boss; then the debate moderator for not exerting enough control.

The Obama campaign's plea that the commander in chief could find no shelter under Jim Lehrer's desk did not exactly bolster Obama's standing. Moreover, the moderator's job is not to control the flow of argument, but to simply enforce an even time split.

Lehrer did. In fact, Obama took more time than Romney - 41 / 2 minutes more - while actually speaking 500 fewer words. Romney knew what he thought and said it. Obama kept looking around hoping for the words to come to him. They didn't.

After the scapegoats came the excuses.

l Obama had a bad night. He was off his game.

Nonsense. This isObama's game. Great at delivering telepromptered addresses to adoring Germans and swooning students. But he's not very good on his feet.

His problem is that he doesn't think so. He not only believes his own press, he believes his own mythology. He actually said (in 2007): "I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And . . . I'm a better political director than my political director."

Obama is a man of considerable intelligence. But he's not half as transcendently smart as he thinks he is.

He needs a servant in his chariot reminding him that he's not an immortal. Of course, after the debate the entire Democratic Party told him he's a dud. Wrong again. He's neither lord nor commoner. He's just an above-average politician who needs a very good night in one of the next two debates.

l He was weighed down by the burdens of office.

Ah yes, the burdens of office. Like going on "The View" while meeting with not a single foreign leader at the United Nations. Like flying to a Vegas campaign rally the day after a U.S. consulate is sacked and the ambassador murdered. Like rushing off to New York for a night with Jay-Z and Beyonce.

Rocky Mountain altitude is a better excuse than that. (Thank you, Al Gore.)

l Reductionism.

Stephanie Cutter and David Axelrod both said (amazing coincidence) that Romney won on "style points."

So, the most charismatic politician since Pierre Elliot Trudeau was beaten by an android - on style? I concede that Obama's reaction shots were awful. But he lost on radio too. And in print. Read the transcript. This wasn't about appearances. Romney didn't win on style. He won on an avalanche of substance, on a complete takedown of six months of Obama portraying Romney as enemy of the middle class, friend and footman of the rich.

That was the heart of the Obama campaign. After all, with crushing debt, chronically high unemployment and the worst economic recovery since World War II, Obama can't run on stewardship. Nor on the future. He has no serious agenda. Nothing on entitlements, nothing on tax reform, nothing on debt, nothing on the fiscal cliff.

So when Romney completely deflated that six-month "kill Romney" strategy - by looking reasonable, responsible, authoritative in demonstrating how his policies would help the middle class by stimulating economic growth - what did Obama have left?

Big Bird. The stupidest ad in memory. Has any president ever run an ad so small and trivial? After an unprecedented shellacking in a debate about very large issues, this is his response?

The Middle East is ablaze, the country drowning in debt, the fiscal cliff looming - and Obama's great pitch is that only he can save the $130 million enterprise that is the Sesame Workshop?

An inspiring second-term agenda: subsidies for Big Bird and free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke.

Obama has two debates to come up with something better. If he can't, he will double down on his "Romney the menace" line. It might still work. But a word of advice: Your administration having prevaricated unceasingly - and scandalously - about the massacre in Benghazi, I'd be cautious about the "he's a liar" line of attack.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



515 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 12, 2012 Friday 6:04 PM EST


A complete guide to the deluge of campaign ads;
We rate five of the most widely seen ads from each campaign.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1280 words


Pity the poor voter in a swing state in the final weeks of this campaign. Whenever you turn on the television, there is yet another campaign ad from either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney - and most of the time they are bashing the other guy.

We have reviewed and rated many of these ads over the past months, but as the ad spending reaches a crescendo, we thought it would be useful to once again examine some of the most frequently aired ads. With the help of Kantar Media, we identified the 10 ads from each campaign with the greatest spending on them. We then selected five from each side, with a bias toward picking ads that were released recently. (There is one additional Romney ad that we note - but do not rate.) Where appropriate, we also include links to our original column on the ad.

 Looking at these ads, we are struck by the consistent themes, with Obama portraying Romney as a heartless corporate raider and Romney portraying Obama as a hapless president.

Obama campaign ads

Obama: 'Firms'

 This sly, almost wicked ad features Mitt Romney signing "America the beautiful" while images flash of his alleged connections overseas - his Bain Capital firms shipping jobs to Mexico and China, outsourcing jobs to India as governor, and his use of a Swiss bank account and tax havens overseas.  We did not rate this specific ad, but have investigated most of these claims and they are exaggerated or lack evidence.

A similar ad earned Four Pinocchios, but this one, on a blended basis, gets Three.

Obama: 'Believes'

This ad hits Romney as believing in  "outsourcing" while touting Obama as an advocate of "insourcing." The charge against Romney is based on a Washington Post article that, as we have often noted, is not correctly quoted by the Obama campaign.

Obama: 'Heard It All Before'

This ad trashes Romney's economic record as Massachusetts governor, frequently stretching the truth. It claims Massachusetts was 47th in job creation in the nation, but that is a blended four-year rating, and thus ignores the fact that Romney boosted the Bay State's standing - from 50th to 28th - in tough economic times. The Massachusetts state debt did increase by $2.6 billion, but as we have explained much of that was for capital investments such as public buildings and roads, not operating expenses. We had awarded Two Pinocchios to a similar Obama ad.

Obama: 'My Job'

This highly effective ad uses Mitt Romney's own words about the "47 percent of Americans" who do not pay federal income taxes - secretly video-taped at a Boca Raton fundraiser - against him. The ad simply plays Romney's dismissive comments as photographs of ordinary, working Americans flash by. When the video was first revealed by Mother Jones magazine, we gave Three Pinocchios to Romney for failing recognize that many of these people do pay other taxes, especially payroll taxes. Romney has since said his remarks were "just completely wrong." But the impact of this ad may be long felt. We cannot find anything misleading or false in it, so it earns a rare Geppetto Checkmark.

Obama: 'Table'

This is an unusually long ad - two minutes - in which Obama talks directly to the camera and outlines his plans for the nation. We had previously given this ad Three Pinocchios for Obama's claim that Romney would "double down" on the same tax-cut and regulatory policies that led the economic crisis. There is no evidence that the George W. Bush tax cuts led to the economic crisis. In this ad, Obama also repeats a claim we have frequently faulted - that the savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq can be used for nation-building at home and to reduce the deficit. It is a budgetary gimmick that still puts the money on the credit card that Obama has long decried as bad policy under Bush.

Romney campaign ads

Romney: 'Shame on You'

We were surprised to discover that two of Romney's top 10 ads - this one and a similar one titled "No Evidence" - featured the conclusions of a Fact Checker column about an Obama Bain Capital ad, which we had given 4 Pinocchios. These ads also feature then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton complaining about misleading ads - what the Romney ad calls "vicious lies" - run by her then rival, Sen. Barack Obama. She of course now works for Obama as his secretary of State. We are uncomfortable rating something that quotes this column so we will simply note it for the record.

Romney: 'Where Did the Money Go?'

This kitchen-soup ad throws out a lot of charges about Obama's stimulus bill - claims about crony capitalism, and also money spent on supposed windmills in China and electric cars from Finland. It also features a quote by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), which in intended to validate the claims but turned out to be out-of-date and overtaken by events. On balance, when we previously rated the ad, it earned Two Pinocchios.

Romney: 'These Hands'

This ad features a small businessman who denounces Obama for his comments - taken out of context - that "if you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." From a reading of the full comment, made in a campaign speech, it is pretty clear that the "that" referred to roads and bridges, as part of a riff on how the wealthy should give something back to the government because they benefit from it in many ways. (Later it emerged that the business owner featured in the ad had benefited from millions of dollars in government contracts.) But that did not stop Republicans from making "build that" the theme of the first night of the GOP Convention. We awarded this quote-twisting Three Pinocchios when this ad first aired over the summer.

Romney: 'Paid In'

This ad focuses on Medicare, in particular the claim that Obama took more than $700 billion from Medicare to fund the health care law. We have repeatedly noted the problems with the claim that he "cut" Medicare by that amount - and we have also highlighted the fact that the budget plan authored by Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, kept much of the same Medicare savings but dedicated it to other purposes. The most objectionable part about this ad is that it suggests that Obama is taking money that seniors had "paid in" to the system, when in fact the reductions are aimed mostly at hospitals and providers.

Romney: 'Stand Up to China'

Two of Romney's top 10 ads feature China, and this one is particularly misleading. The ad claims that Obama's policies toward China have "cost us 2 million jobs." The claim was based on a 2011 report from the International Trade Commission concerning the impact of Chinese intellectual-property infringements. The report noted that improving protection of such rights could lead to an additional 2.1 million jobs - but that is not the result of Obama's policies. The report framed it as an opportunity lost, not the disappearance of jobs. In fact, the report notes that the Obama administration had taken action on the issue. This ad earned Three Pinocchios.

Romney: 'Too Many Americans'

This 60-second ad is Romney's speak-to-the-camera moment; it was intended to help mitigate the fallout from his "47 percent" comments. He throws out a lot of statistics about economic woes in the United States, but his most misleading comment is about his own economic plan - that it would create 12 million jobs. As we have previously noted, that is in line with what economists think will happen - no matter who is president.

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



516 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 12, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition


The Big Bird counterattack


BYLINE: Charles Krauthammer


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 735 words


No mystery about the trajectory of this race. It was static for months as President Obama held a marginal lead. Then came the conventions. The Republicans squandered Tampa; the Democrats got a 3- to 4-point bounce out of Charlotte.

And kept it. Until the first debate. In 90 minutes, Mitt Romney wiped out the bump - and maybe more.

Democrats are shellshocked and left searching for excuses. Start with scapegoats: the hapless John Kerry, Obama's sparring partner in the practice debates, for going too soft on the boss; then the debate moderator for not exerting enough control.

The Obama campaign's plea that the commander in chief could find no shelter under Jim Lehrer's desk did not exactly bolster Obama's standing. Moreover, the moderator's job is not to control the flow of argument, but to simply enforce an even time split.

Lehrer did. In fact, Obama took more time than Romney - 41 / 2 minutes more - while actually speaking 500 fewer words. Romney knew what he thought and said it. Obama kept looking around hoping for the words to come to him. They didn't.

After the scapegoats came the excuses.

lObama had a bad night. He was off his game.

Nonsense. This is Obama's game. Great at delivering telepromptered addresses to adoring Germans and swooning students. But he's not very good on his feet.

His problem is that he doesn't think so. He not only believes his own press, he believes his own mythology. He actually said (in 2007): "I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And . . . I'm a better political director than my political director."

Obama is a man of considerable intelligence. But he's not half as transcendently smart as he thinks he is.

He needs a servant in his chariot reminding him that he's not an immortal. Of course, after the debate the entire Democratic Party told him he's a dud. Wrong again. He's neither lord nor commoner. He's just an above-average politician who needs a very good night in one of the next two debates.

lHe was weighed down by the burdens of office.

Ah yes, the burdens of office. Like going on "The View" while meeting with not a single foreign leader at the United Nations. Like flying to a Vegas campaign rally the day after a U.S. consulate is sacked and the ambassador murdered. Like rushing off to New York for a night with Jay-Z and Beyonce.

Rocky Mountain altitude is a better excuse than that. (Thank you, Al Gore.)

lReductionism.

Stephanie Cutter and David Axelrod both said (amazing coincidence) that Romney won on "style points."

So, the most charismatic politician since Pierre Elliot Trudeau was beaten by an android - on style? I concede that Obama's reaction shots were awful. But he lost on radio too. And in print. Read the transcript. This wasn't about appearances. Romney didn't win on style. He won on an avalanche of substance, on a complete takedown of six months of Obama portraying Romney as enemy of the middle class, friend and footman of the rich.

That was the heart of the Obama campaign. After all, with crushing debt, chronically high unemployment and the worst economic recovery since World War II, Obama can't run on stewardship. Nor on the future. He has no serious agenda. Nothing on entitlements, nothing on tax reform, nothing on debt, nothing on the fiscal cliff.

So when Romney completely deflated that six-month "kill Romney" strategy - by looking reasonable, responsible, authoritative in demonstrating how his policies would help the middle class by stimulating economic growth - what did Obama have left?

Big Bird. The stupidest ad in memory. Has any president ever run an ad so small and trivial? After an unprecedented shellacking in a debate about very large issues, this is his response?

The Middle East is ablaze, the country drowning in debt, the fiscal cliff looming - and Obama's great pitch is that only he can save the $130 million enterprise that is the Sesame Workshop?

An inspiring second-term agenda: subsidies for Big Bird and free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke.

Obama has two debates to come up with something better. If he can't, he will double down on his "Romney the menace" line. It might still work. But a word of advice: Your administration having prevaricated unceasingly - and scandalously - about the massacre in Benghazi, I'd be cautious about the "he's a liar" line of attack.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



517 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


This Election, A Stark Choice In Health Care


BYLINE: By ABBY GOODNOUGH and ROBERT PEAR


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1697 words


Joyce Beck, who runs a small hospital and network of medical clinics in rural Nebraska, is reluctant to plan for the future until voters decide between President Obama and Mitt Romney. The candidates' sharply divergent proposals for Medicare, Medicaid and coverage of the uninsured have created too much uncertainty, she explained.

''We are all on hold, waiting to see what the election brings,'' said Ms. Beck, chief executive of Thayer County Health Services in Hebron, Neb.

When Americans go to the polls next month, they will cast a vote not just for president but for one of two profoundly different visions for the future of the country's health care system. With an Obama victory on Nov. 6, the president's signature health care law -- including the contentious requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance or pay a tax penalty -- will almost certainly come into full force, becoming the largest expansion of the safety net since President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through his Great Society programs almost half a century ago.

If Mr. Romney wins and Republicans capture the Senate, much of the law could be repealed -- or its financing cut back -- and the president's goal of achieving near-universal coverage could take a back seat to Mr. Romney's top priority, controlling medical costs.

Given the starkness of the choice, historians and policy makers believe this election could be the most significant referendum on a piece of social legislation since 1936, when the Republican Alf M. Landon ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs. (Nearly eight decades have passed, but the debate sounds strikingly familiar: Landon described the Social Security Act, passed in 1935, as ''the largest tax bill in history'' and called for its repeal.)

''It is very rare for a political party to pass a social program of this magnitude and then to face the possibility of a rollback or repeal in a presidential election,'' said James A. Morone, a professor of political science at Brown University who has studied the history of health policy.

For Medicare and Medicaid, the government health programs for older Americans, low-income people and the disabled, the candidates have sharply different visions as well. Mr. Romney's proposals call for fundamental changes in the structure of the programs, placing more emphasis on private-sector solutions and much less on government regulation.

Mr. Obama would expand Medicaid to cover millions more people; Mr. Romney would effectively shrink it, giving each state a fixed amount of federal money to cover its disadvantaged population with more control over eligibility and benefits. Mr. Romney would eventually give each Medicare beneficiary a fixed amount of federal money to pay premiums for either the traditional Medicare program or private insurance. Mr. Obama would preserve the structure of Medicare but try to rein in costs, in part by trimming payments to health care providers.

Passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was, to many, Mr. Obama's most significant legislative accomplishment. But the law proved so divisive that undoing it has become a central rallying cry of Republicans seeking to retake the White House.

Julian E. Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton, said that Mr. Obama ''has not embraced his own record with as much enthusiasm, passion and confidence'' as either Roosevelt or Johnson. But the president has, in recent weeks, responded more aggressively to the critics. He has even embraced the derisive term ''Obamacare,'' saying: ''I do care. That's why we passed the bill.''

Armed with data suggesting that the law is popular with crucial groups of voters -- including young people, women and Hispanics -- Mr. Obama plans to run more television commercials and distribute fliers taking credit for popular provisions of the 2010 health law and asserting that Mr. Romney would take away Medicare's ''guaranteed benefits.''

As seen in last week's presidential debate, the health care discussion has become a dizzying flurry of numbers, bold claims and counterclaims. But the outlines of what might happen under a Romney administration or a second Obama administration go something like this:

If Romney Wins

Even though he helped develop the landmark 2006 law that required most Massachusetts residents to have health insurance -- a model for the Obama law -- Mr. Romney has said repeatedly that he believes that requiring Americans to buy health insurance as national policy is the wrong approach. The focus should not be on increasing the number of insured Americans, his advisers say, so much as on controlling health costs by fixing the dysfunctional insurance market.

Mr. Romney has been less specific about what he will put in place if the law is repealed. But most of his ideas are aimed at bolstering market forces. One of the biggest problems, he says, is that people who get health insurance through their employers receive a tax break -- the value of employer contributions to their premiums is not counted as income -- while people who buy coverage in the individual insurance market generally get none. Mr. Romney says he would level the playing field by creating tax breaks for people who buy insurance on their own -- a measure that might encourage even those with the option of employer-sponsored coverage to buy their own plans instead.

''As a result,'' Mr. Romney said in a summary of his health care proposals in The New England Journal of Medicine, ''they will be price-sensitive, quality-conscious, and able to seek out the features they want.''

Mr. Romney believes that if more people buy coverage on their own, insurers will compete harder for their business, thus presumably lowering costs. And if insurance is separated from employment, the Romney campaign says, people will be able to keep their coverage if they lose or change jobs.

Paul Fronstin, an economist at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization, said the proposal would work only if Mr. Romney made additional efforts to bring down the cost of health care. In the past, he said, advocates of such proposals typically offered tax credits ranging from about $1,500 to $2,500 a year for an individual -- not necessarily enough to make coverage affordable.

''Will other things bring down premiums to make those tax credits more meaningful?'' Mr. Fronstin asked. ''That's an open question.''

The new health care law prohibits insurers from turning people away or charging them more because they are sick, and Mr. Romney says he will guarantee access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. But his guarantee would extend only to people who have maintained coverage without a significant gap. That means millions could still be rejected.

Mr. Romney says many of them could get coverage through health plans known as high-risk pools. Many states have such pools, but the coverage they offer can be prohibitively expensive.

If Obama Wins

If Mr. Obama is re-elected, he would step up efforts to carry out the health care law. Given the controversy over the law and the logistical challenge of setting up state insurance ''exchanges'' where people can shop for coverage, the transition will probably be rocky. But many doctors, hospitals and insurance companies are determined to make it work.

On Jan. 1, 2014, the requirement that most Americans have medical coverage takes effect. Private health plans will start enrolling people in October 2013. The result, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is that 30 million uninsured people will eventually gain coverage. To help them afford it, the federal government would subsidize private insurance premiums for people with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level ($92,200 for a family of four). And it would expand Medicaid to cover more poor people, including many adults without children.

Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have beaten back efforts to change the law before its major provisions take effect. But after the election, Congress will be under intense pressure to rein in deficits and debt, and lawmakers will focus anew on the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and the new health care law, which together could account for one-third of all federal spending in 2022.

Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change, said that a willingness to compromise might help Mr. Obama persuade Republicans to accept the health care law if he wins a second term. For example, Mr. Ginsburg said, the president and Congressional Democrats might agree to delay the biggest, most expensive parts of the law for a year, giving the administration and states more time to prepare and saving a substantial amount of money. He also suggested that to help with deficit reduction, Mr. Obama and Congress might reduce the size of the federal subsidies meant to help middle-income people buy insurance.

In the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama often told voters that he would lower premiums by $2,500 a year per family ''by the end of my first term as president.'' It has not happened, though the White House says the law has slowed the growth of premiums, in part by establishing new procedures to review proposed rate increases.

Some provisions of the law may tend to increase premiums in 2014. Insurers and health policy experts say young adults could face higher premiums because of a provision that limits how much rates can vary based on a person's age.

Whether Mr. Obama's law will slow the overall growth of health care costs remains to be seen. Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group, said a few provisions -- such as a new tax on high-priced health insurance plans, to take effect in 2018 -- could help rein in costs.

In the meantime, people like Sarah L. Moseley of Birmingham, Ala., are simply hoping that the next president and Congress will guarantee coverage at more affordable rates. Ms. Moseley, who has ovarian cancer, said she had been denied commercial insurance and was paying more than $600 a month for limited coverage in the state's high-risk pool.

''I don't have much longer to live,'' she said.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/health/policy/this-election-two-profoundly-different-visions-for-health-care.html


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Lyndon B. Johnson, with former President Harry S. Truman, signed the Medicare bill. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ASSOCIATED PRESS) (A18) CHARTS: Two Approaches on Health Care: President Obama and Mitt Romney have profound differences over how to address problems with health insurance coverage and rising health care costs. Most of the major provisions of the Obama health care law will not go into effect until 2014. (Sources: Census Bureau (uninsured Americans)
Kaiser Family Foundation (insurance premiums)
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Medicare costs)
National Association of State Budget Officers (Medicaid costs)
Department of Health and Human Services (pre-existing conditions)) (A18)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



518 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Campaign Looks to Capitalize on Image Voters Saw in Debate


BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO and ASHLEY PARKER; Jeff Zeleny contributed from reporting from Sidney, Ohio.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 1152 words


BOSTON -- Inside Mitt Romney's campaign headquarters over the past few days, the data pouring in was unmistakable. Aides scouring the results of focus groups and national polls found that undecided voters watching the presidential debate in Denver seemed startled when the Republican candidate portrayed all year by Democrats -- the ultraconservative, unfeeling capitalist -- did not materialize.

The voters, they discovered, consistently reserved their highest marks for moments when Mr. Romney sounded bipartisan and moderate, two themes he has long played down on the campaign trail but seemed to take pains to showcase this week with centrist-sounding statements on taxes, abortion and immigration.

But the appearance at this late stage of a modulating Mitt Romney risks reopening a long-running debate about his authenticity, given that he has described himself as ''severely conservative,'' dismissed 47 percent of voters as government dependent, and picked a bold conservative as his running mate.

Behind the new efforts by the Romney campaign to soften his conservative edges and showcase his personal story was a realization by his political team -- borne out by reactions to his performance at the debate -- that with the economy showing improvement their best shot at victory is to aggressively defy the negative perceptions that have dogged him throughout the race.

In interviews, those advisers described a strategy to capitalize on Mr. Romney's upswing in the final stretch by highlighting his record of bipartisanship, his time as governor of Massachusetts and history of personal generosity -- relying on television advertising, appearances by high-profile supporters and speeches by the candidate himself.

Russ Schriefer, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, said that four years ago Obama voters ''liked the idea of him being a bipartisan president.''

''And just because they've given up on him,'' he said, ''they haven't given up on the idea of someone being bipartisan and working across the aisle to get things done.''

How aggressively the campaign will pursue this approach on the campaign trail and over the airwaves is an open question. Since the debate, Mr. Romney has not entirely remade his stump speech to emphasize those messages. And the commercials released by the campaign on Wednesday focused on the economy, not bipartisanship as governor -- a notion that some Massachusetts lawmakers hotly dispute.

What they are envisioning represents a high-stakes wager that voters can be persuaded by a version of Mr. Romney that they have scarcely seen -- a version that is, in many ways, at odds with how Mr. Romney campaigned throughout the Republican primary season, when he emphasized his conservatism on social and economic issues.

The perils of such a shift became evident on Wednesday when conservatives expressed wariness about remarks in which Mr. Romney seemed to again muddle his position on abortion. In an interview with the editorial board of The Des Moines Register, which has supported abortion rights and usually endorses Democrats in general elections, Mr. Romney said, ''There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda.''

Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Iowa, told listeners on Wednesday, ''I'm running out of fingers and toes to count the number of positions he has taken on abortion.''

The Obama campaign pounced. It accused Mr. Romney, who has previously said he would like to see the Supreme Court overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, of ''cynically and dishonestly'' misleading voters about his views on abortion.

Mr. Romney's aides said he was responding to a specific question about his agenda in Congress, not a broader inquiry about abortion. Even so, they felt compelled to quickly assure religious conservatives that his position had not changed, reaching out to leaders like Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an advocacy group that vigorously opposes abortion.

By Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Romney told reporters after a campaign event in Ohio: ''I'm a pro-life candidate. I'll be a pro-life president.''

Mr. Romney set off similar confusion last week when he declared that he would not cancel two-year deportation deferrals for illegal immigrants granted by the Obama administration, a position that distanced him from conservative orthodoxy.

But a few days later, his campaign clarified that Mr. Romney intended to halt the program after he took office and would not issue any new deferrals.

The changes are sometimes subtle. Mr. Romney, who has long extolled the virtues of two-parent families, offered words of praise for single mothers at a rally in Ohio on Wednesday, including them in a list of people ''who live for things bigger than ourselves.''

The Romney campaign, which once winced at the mere suggestion that he had changed a position and hounded journalists who used the word ''flip-flop,'' seemed largely unbothered by claims that he is reorienting himself for a general election audience.

''Those concerns have receded,'' said Gary Marx, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a former Romney counselor on conservative issues. ''He is being intentional about reaching out to a broader cross-section of voters on these issues.''

He added: ''He is delivering multiple messages to different groups. That is a sophisticated campaign at work late in the game.''

The strategy is both a reaction to a changing campaign landscape and the fruit of long-running internal debates over how to sell Mr. Romney to a sometimes skeptical electorate. After a year of focusing relentlessly on President's Obama's stewardship of the economy, and resisting pressure to offer a three-dimensional portrait of Mr. Romney as a father, husband, businessman and governor, the campaign realized that it needed to switch gears.

The Obama campaign had filled the void through advertising and news releases, leaving many voters with strongly negative views of Mr. Romney by the time he became the Republican nominee.

The new approach was trotted out haltingly at first and was overwhelmed for a time by a leaked video of Mr. Romney talking about ''47 percent'' of voters who do not pay taxes. But it finally seemed to break through during the first presidential debate.

Republican political operatives said there was already proof in the polls that playing up Mr. Romney's inclination toward pragmatism and problem-solving is resonating with voters.

''Barack Obama has been out there for months saying that Mitt Romney is this scary beast that will eat your children and throw Grandma out in the snow,'' said Alex Castellanos, a veteran Republican operative who worked for Mr. Romney in 2008 but is not aligned with any candidate this year. ''And all of a sudden this very practical businessman showed up in the debates, and he's just not the guy Obama has been painting.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/us/politics/romney-campaign-looks-to-capitalize-on-image-voters-saw-in-debate.html


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Mitt Romney campaigned at the Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors, in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on Wednesday. He was joined at the company by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. (A12)
Workers in Mount Vernon, Ohio, listened to Mitt Romney speak Wednesday. Romney aides are weighing a shift in strategy. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A17) CHART: Romney's Statements on Abortion: Mitt Romney has spoken about his stance on abortion many times in his public career, but his campaign quickly issued a clarification of his position after an interview on Tuesday with The Des Moines Register. (A17)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



519 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Preparation and Expectations for Biden-Ryan Debate


BYLINE: By TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 869 words


Over three days last week, Representative Paul D. Ryan reserved an indoor tennis court at a Virginia resort -- not to practice his backhand, but to hold mock debates. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been at his own debate camp in Delaware this week, overseen by President Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod.

After Mitt Romney's momentum-shifting performance in the first presidential debate, the stakes were raised for the matchup between their chief surrogates.

The vice-presidential candidates have spent weeks going over their own and their opponent's talking points for Thursday night's debate in Danville, Ky. Here are six things to watch:

Biden Unbound

Mr. Biden gave the kind of scathing rebuttal to Mr. Romney at a rally the day after the presidential debate that many Democrats wished the president had made.

Expect Mr. Biden, who is able to deliver cutting sarcasm without seeming angry, to continue to make up for Mr. Obama's passivity at the first debate by accusing Mr. Romney of dissembling about long-held policies.

Mr. Ryan is prepared to vigorously set the record straight when he thinks the vice president is distorting, such as the charge that Mr. Romney has proposed $5 trillion in tax cuts directed toward the wealthy. ''He'll be in full attack mode,'' Mr. Ryan said of Mr. Biden in an interview last week with The Weekly Standard, ''and I don't think he'll let any inconvenient facts get in his way.''

The Ryan Budget

Republicans and Democrats both rejoiced when Mr. Romney picked Mr. Ryan because the ticket was married to Mr. Ryan's audacious House budgets with deep cuts in federal spending.

Although the budget, which Mr. Romney has largely endorsed, does not specify how programs will be cut, Mr. Biden will happily fill in the blanks by saying that an equal, across-the-board cut would mean eliminating 38,000 teachers and dropping 200,000 children from Head Start.

''The way the Ryan budget works is that it ultimately achieves balance by eliminating the entire federal government other than the Defense Department,'' said Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, who has stood in for Mr. Ryan in Mr. Biden's mock debates.

Medicare Cuts

Will Mr. Ryan be tempted to repeat a staple of his and Mr. Romney's stump speech, that the president has plundered $716 billion from Medicare to pay for ''Obamacare?''

There is danger there. Mr. Ryan incorporated the same $716 billion savings into his House budget this spring, and he has now renounced that plan because Mr. Romney promises to ''restore'' the money to Medicare.

Mr. Biden would love to see Mr. Ryan, a self-described ''numbers guy,'' get lost in the weeds of budget baselines and other details that he sometimes uses to explain this discrepancy.

But the trap seems too easy. If there is one thing that Mr. Ryan has been working on in his debate rehearsals, aides said, it is condensing inside-the-Beltway arguments into crisp, two-minute answers.

Over the Fiscal Cliff?

The Romney-Ryan campaign is using the threat of a ''fiscal cliff'' -- the combination of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and a $1.2 trillion automatic spending cut to begin in 2013 -- to attack the White House for threatening to devastate the military.

But the issue is a double-edged sword. Mr. Ryan voted for the debt ceiling compromise in 2011 that created the automatic budget cuts. Look for Mr. Biden to also make hay of Mr. Ryan's rejection of a bipartisan debt compromise plan last year.

Foreign Affairs

The subject of foreign affairs is sure to be a major focus, not least because the moderator, Martha Raddatz, is ABC News's senior foreign affairs correspondent. Another reason: the recent intrusion of events in North Africa and the Middle East into the race.

The Romney-Ryan campaign senses an opening to undermine Mr. Obama's image of strength after killing Osama bin Laden by questioning if the administration was alert to terrorist threats that led to the death of the American ambassador in Libya.

Mr. Biden will seek to expose Mr. Ryan's lack of foreign policy experience and contrast his own eminence as a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

''We'll draw Ryan out on some of these issues he's spent only a minute or so talking about in the past,'' said an aide to Mr. Biden. ''It's hard to bluff your way through on a foreign policy question.''

Mr. Ryan has been studying for the debates under the tutelage of Dan Senor, an adviser to Mr. Romney on the Middle East.

Gaffes, Anyone?

Republicans like to caricature Mr. Biden, 69, as gaffe-prone and a soft target -- his recent ad-libbed remark that the middle class was ''buried the last four years'' confirmed those impressions.

But Mr. Ryan, 42, does not buy into the stereotype about a bumbling vice president. After watching Mr. Biden's 2008 debate with Sarah Palin on tape, Mr. Ryan came away impressed with the vice president's discipline.

Aides reviewed all 14 of Mr. Biden's 2008 primary and vice-presidential debates; they realized that unlike speeches when he departs from written remarks and gets into trouble, he is focused and effective in the structured debate format. ''I was stunned by the Palin performance. He was clearly very disciplined,'' an aide said.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/us/politics/six-things-to-watch-for-in-biden-ryan-debate.html


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Representative Paul D. Ryan's budget is expected to play a role in the Thursday night debate. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MAX WHITTAKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivers cutting sarcasm without sounding angry. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



520 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 11, 2012 Thursday


Before a Big Crowd in Ohio, Romney Glides on Debate's Lift


BYLINE: TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 793 words



HIGHLIGHT: As he wrapped up a second day of all-in effort in this critical battleground state, Mr. Romney continued to rally large crowds, the biggest of his campaign, and to glide on the lift of his debate performance last week.


SIDNEY, Ohio - "I'm overwhelmed by the number of people here. There are even people out there, that's another county over there," Mitt Romney said as he surveyed a sea of supporters at the county fairgrounds here in western Ohio on Wednesday.

As he wrapped up a second day of all-in effort in this critical battleground state, Mr. Romney continued to rally large crowds, the biggest of his campaign, and to glide on the lift of his debate performance last week. Every reference to the debate drew cheers. The Romney campaign said the throng numbered 9,500, citing the Secret Service.

"This is bigger than the fair was," said Louie Pennycuff, 64. "After the debate, people woke up."

Earlier in the day when Mr. Romney visited a bakery restaurant, throngs lined the streets of Delaware, Ohio, for his motorcade as if for a Fourth of July parade.

Mr. Romney, who all year has allowed Democrats to define him as a rich son of privilege who wants to benefit his own kind but lacks empathy for ordinary people, seems to have broken free of that image. Certainly the crowds who come to see him are not of the plutocratic class.

He released a new television advertisement on Wednesday using a clip of the presidential debate in which he asserted, "Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300."

His stump speech these days is less about small businesses whose owners "did built that," than about conveying empathy for working-class Americans with economic anxieties. He introduced unlikely and surprising new characters to his speech: he offered praise for "a single mom who's trying to raise a kid or two or three," and "a dad who's taking on multiple jobs."

At an appearance earlier in the day in Mount Vernon, he stood with the chief executive of a factory, Karen Buchwald Wright, but perhaps the most memorable thing he said was not about her business but that she and Ann Romney, the candidate's wife, "are both breast cancer survivors." He wore a breast cancer awareness pin.

The Obama campaign responded to Mr. Romney's new ad, "Helping the Middle Class," by revisiting the analysis by independent tax experts that the tax plan Mr. Romney has proposed, including a 20 percent across-the-board rate cut without adding to the deficit, would mean increased taxes for the middle class.

"Here's what the real Mitt Romney's plan would mean for middle class families: a $2,000 tax increase for those with kids to pay for $250,000 tax cuts for multimillionaires - he just won't be straight with voters about it," said Danny Kanner, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Many of Mr. Romney's talking points have a populist ring, though they are less populist on closer inspection. Attacking Mr. Obama, he said, "He wants to raise the tax on savings," a reference to the president's proposal to increase taxes on investment income, even though it is mostly the rich who receive income from dividends and capital gains.

The president wants to "put in place a death tax which will make it more difficult for people to pass farms on," Mr. Romney said at a lectern with a sign, "Farmers for Mitt." He did not mention that Mr. Obama's proposal includes a $3.5 million exemption. The Congressional Budget Office has said that only a handful of farms a year nationally would owe any estate taxes.

The most striking aspect of the more empathetic Mr. Romney appearing on the stump is a series of reminiscences of people whose lives were tragically cut short. On Wednesday, however, he dropped one account introduced the day before, about having met a former Navy SEAL killed in the attack on the American outpost in Libya, after the man's mother objected.

Barbara Doherty, the mother of Glen A. Doherty, who was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, told WHDH-TV in Boston: "I don't trust Romney. He shouldn't make my son's death part of his political agenda. It's wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama."

Mr. Romney did not mention Mr. Doherty at his evening rally. Instead, he told a story about a Boy Scout troop that convinced NASA to include its American flag in a Space Shuttle mission, only to watch the vehicle, Challenger, explode "before their eyes" on television. The flag miraculously was found intact. Mr. Romney described standing beside it at a scout ceremony. "I looked over at that flag and I pulled it out and it was like electricity was running through my arms," he said.

To him, it represented the spirit of Americans sacrificing "for something bigger than themselves."



LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



521 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


October 11, 2012 Thursday


Oct. 10: Is Romney Leading Right Now?


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 2649 words



HIGHLIGHT: The answer depends on how much weight you give national polls versus state-level polls, because the two kinds surveys are saying different things.


Polling since the debate in Denver last week has generally been very strong for Mitt Romney. But there have also been a couple of rays of hope for Democrats and President Obama.

One hypothesis is that Mr. Romney's debate bounce was initially very strong, but has since faded some. There is a case to be made for this - but Wednesday's polling made it weaker.

Although Mr. Romney's standing declined by two points in the Gallup national tracking poll, he improved slightly in four other tracking surveys, from Rasmussen Reports, Ipsos, Investors' Business Daily and the RAND Corporation. And the state polling data that came in on Wednesday was generally consistent with about a three-and-a-half-point bounce for Mr. Romney, similar to previous days.

There is some spotty evidence that Mr. Romney's bounce may have been as large as five or six points in polls conducted in the 48 hours after the debate, so perhaps the most recent data does reflect something of a comedown for him. But if his bounce started out at five or six points and has now settled in at three or four, that would still reflect an extremely profound swing in the race - consistent with the largest shifts produced by past presidential debates. We'll see what happens once the news cycle turns over, such as after Thursday's vice-presidential debate.

For the time being, however, Mr. Romney continues to rocket forward in our projections. The forecast model now gives him about a one-in-three chance of winning the Electoral College (more specifically, a 32.1 percent chance), his highest figure since Aug. 22 and more than double his chances from before the debate. Mr. Romney may have increased his chances of becoming president by 15 or 20 percent based on one night in Denver.

The more troubling sign for Mr. Romney, however, is that although he's made gains, he does not seem to have taken the lead in very many state polls. That trend, if anything, has become more entrenched. Of the half-dozen or so polls of battleground states published on Wednesday, none showed Mr. Romney ahead; the best result he managed was a 48-48 tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll of New Hampshire.

(We ran the model on Wednesday before the latest polls from Marist College, The Philadelphia Inquirer, orThe New York Times, Quinnipiac University and CBS News were published overnight, which were also suggestive of a narrow advantage for Mr. Obama in the majority of swing states.)

How to reconcile this against the fact that Mr. Romney is about tied - or perhaps even has a small lead - in the average of national polls right now?

From a forecasting standpoint, this is the question that the whole election may turn upon. There are basically four ways to explain the difference.

1) This is a statistical quirk that will work its way out of the system.
2) Mr. Obama has some pronounced advantage in the Electoral College relative to his position in the popular vote.
3) The state polls systematically overestimate Mr. Obama and underestimate Mr. Romney.
4) The national polls systematically overestimate Mr. Romney and underestimate Mr. Obama.

Could State-National Differences Be a Statistical Fluke?

The first proposal - that this simply reflects statistical noise - may be part of the answer, but I don't know that it's a sufficient explanation on its own. Since the Denver debate, there have been on the order of 12,000 people surveyed in national polls, and a similar number in the battleground states. The theoretical margin of error on a 12,000-person sample is about 1.8 percent in reflecting the difference between the two candidates.

If it just so happens that the set of national polls have been a positive outlier for Mr. Romney and the state polls have been a negative outlier for him, then perhaps you can explain the whole of the discrepancy. But that explanation would be more compelling had these differences not also been apparent for most of the election cycle.

An Electoral College-Popular Vote Split?

The second answer is the most intuitively satisfying, and would make the boldest assertion: that in an election held today, Mr. Obama would be favored to win the Electoral College but would probably lose (or at best roughly tie) the popular vote. However, there are several powerful rebuttals to it.

First, splits between the Electoral College and the popular vote are historically very uncommon.

Second, the swing states are swing states for a reason: because they resemble (certainly collectively, if not also individually) the American electorate as a whole. There are a lot of voters in the nonbattleground states who are demographically similar to those in Ohio, Florida, Virginia or Colorado. (If Mr. Obama is performing well in Ohio, then it should figure that he's also performing well with Ohio-like voters in noncompetitive neighboring states like Indiana or Kentucky, for example.) The set of swing states is also quite geographically diverse, covering almost literally the four corners of the country.

Third, the campaigns have been roughly equal in their advertising spending this year. If one campaign had an especially heavy resource advantage in the swing states (as Mr. Obama may have had in 2008), then perhaps this explanation would make more sense.

Fourth, this hypothesis depends implicitly on the idea that Mr. Obama, if he is overperforming in the swing states, must also be underperforming in the other states. Although there hasn't been much polling outside the battleground states recently, the evidence from the polling before the debate was not very supportive of this idea. If anything, for example, Mr. Obama seemed to be performing comparatively well in deeply red states, seeing little drop-off from his 2008 results. Perhaps fresher evidence will lend more credibility to this hypothesis (one poll on Wednesday showed Mr. Obama's margin falling substantially in California, for instance). But it hasn't been that convincing up to this point in time.

None of this means that this case is completely without merit. Our forecast model does infer that Mr. Obama has a very slight Electoral College advantage. (As of Wednesday, it gave him a 67.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College against a 66.7 percent chance of winning the popular vote.)

But some of our competitors are issuing forecasts suggestive of a very large difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote - to a degree that is frankly not credible, in my view. (We'll compare the FiveThirtyEight forecasts against some alternatives in a moment.)

Reasons to Prefer National Polls to State Polls

There are some reasons to prefer national polls to state polls. First, they probably come from slightly stronger polling firms on average and they often have larger sample sizes, although there are exceptions on either side.

Second, they're more straightforward to interpret - especially if you want to derive an estimate of how the national popular vote will break down. The alternative requires you to "add up" the polls from individual states, as well to estimate what share of the national turnout each state will represent.

Reasons to Prefer State Polls to National Polls

Our research suggests, however, that when the state polls and the national polls seem to tell a different story about the state of the campaign, the state polls sometimes (not always, by any means) get it right.

One case in point: national polls on the eve of the 2000 election were consistent with about a three-point lead for George W. Bush. But the collective evidence from state polling was suggestive of a nearly tied race. In fact, the conventional wisdom at that time was that Mr. Bush might win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College - exactly the opposite of the outcome that occurred.

The state polling generally told the more accurate story, however, describing a tossup race, rather than one favoring Mr. Bush.

Similarly, in 1996, most national polls showed Bill Clinton winning by double-digits, while battleground state polls seemed to suggest that he would win by a smaller amount. Mr. Clinton's actual margin of victory was eight and a half percentage points, more in line with the state polling.

What advantages do state polls have? One is just that there are more of them. No, there aren't more Virginia polls than there are national polls. But among Virginia and Ohio and Colorado and the other 47 states, there are quite a lot more. So even if the typical state poll is slightly less accurate the typical national poll, the collective sum of state polls may be more worthwhile than the collective sum of national polls.

Also, the state polls come from a more diverse set of polling firms, and may provide for a greater degree of independence.

What do I mean by "independence"? Here's a dirty little secret: pollsters herd. Or to put it less politely: it's probable that some polling firms, especially those that use less rigorous methodologies, cheat off the stronger ones - seeing what the consensus results are before weighing in on their own.

One piece of evidence for this comes from a paper by the political scientists Joshua Clinton and Steve Rogers, who analyzed polling in the Republican primaries this year. They found that when a low-quality pollster was the first one to poll a state, their results were quite poor. But they did as well as any others once there were high-quality polls already released in the state - possibly implying that the low-quality pollsters were tweaking their assumptions to match the better ones.

My own research is suggestive of a similar phenomenon. I've found that the more polls there are of a state, the narrower the spread between them - in a way that is inconsistent with normal statistical variance. Once there is a consensus established in a state, the pollsters may have an incentive to be in line with it. That may make the individual poll more accurate - but reduce the value of aggregating or averaging polls since the "wisdom of crowds" principle is strongest when individual members of the crowd are behaving independently. Otherwise, it becomes more likely that everyone will miss in the same direction.

Even high-quality polling firms sometimes feel compelled to change their methods if they are out-of-step with the consensus. Gallup announced a set of changes to its methodology on Wednesday, for example. Although the changes are defensible on a theoretical basis (and although it's much better to disclose the changes than not to do so), it's awfully late in the game to be doing that, and makes it harder to compare recent Gallup results to past ones.

(Whether you like the FiveThirtyEight forecast model or not, one advantage it has is that we don't change the rules as we go along. The forecasts that you see today are from a program that we designed in the spring, before knowing how the election would play out.)

The potential advantage of state polls is that, to the extent that the pollsters herd, they're herding relative to 50 state-by-state averages rather than just one national average. So you aren't putting quite so many eggs into one basket.

Another advantage of relying more on state polls is that if you fail, you will tend to fail well. That is, if there really is a big difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote, the state polls will at least get the Electoral College winner right - and that's what determines who occupies the White House.

A Comparison of State-by-State Forecasts

Still, the case is not a slam-dunk. So what the FiveThirtyEight forecasts do is to adjust the state polls in one direction, and the national polls in the opposite one, such that they match.

(The adjustment does not necessarily cause them to meet exactly in the middle. The degree to which the program weights national polls and state polls depends on the overall volume of polling in each realm. Right now, the state polls are abundant enough that they receive somewhat more weight over all.)

So if you compare our forecasts to those of our competitors, what you'll generally find is that we are higher than the other methods on our estimate of Mr. Obama's standing in the national popular vote, but lower than the others in the individual states.

In the chart below, I've compared the results from the FiveThirtyEight "now-cast" as of Wednesday night to those issued by three other polling sites: Real Clear Politics, HuffPost Pollster and Talking Points Memo's PollTracker. The results cover the 11 battleground states that the campaigns have made a material amount of advertising expenditures in, along with each site's estimate of the national popular vote.

On average among the 11 battleground states, we show Mr. Obama with a 2.3 percentage point lead, or 1.9 percentage points as weighted by each state's turnout in 2008. Among the four methods, we have the worst figure for Mr. Obama in Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin, and the highest in none. Our average result for Mr. Obama among the 11 states is also the lowest of the four systems, although tied with RealClearPolitics if weighted by turnout.

The flip-side is that our estimate of Mr. Obama's national popular vote is the highest of the four systems: the "now-cast" shows him one and a half percentage points ahead nationally, while HuffPost Pollster shows a tie, and the other two methods have Mr. Romney slightly ahead.

Thus, we perceive only about a half-point difference between Mr. Obama's performance in the battlegrounds and his national figures. This is similar to the actual results from 2008, when Mr. Obama won the 11 battleground states by an average of 7.7 percentage points (weighted by turnout) and the national popular vote by 7.3 points.

By contrast, Talking Points Memo has Mr. Obama three points ahead on average in the battlegrounds, but three points behind in the national popular vote - a six-point spread. Real Clear Politics shows about a three -and-a-half-point gap, while HuffPost Pollster, whose methodology is the most similar to FiveThirtyEight, has a two-point difference.

A two-point difference is within the realm of possibility, although our model would require a bit more evidence to support a difference that large (specifically, poor polling for Mr. Obama in non-battleground states relative to his polling in swing states).

But there's just no way that Mr. Obama would be even-money in the Electoral College if he were trailing in the national popular vote by four to six points.

All of this is a very long-winded way of answering the question in the headline: is Mr. Romney ahead right now? None of the systems that rely on state-level polling say that he's ahead in the Electoral College right now, although the FiveThirtyEight models perceive a slightly smaller Electoral College gap between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama than some of the other systems.

The difference is that we, and HuffPost Pollster, are looking at the Electoral College and the popular vote in a holistic way. The evidence is ambiguous enough that it's hard to know for sure, but the fact that Mr. Obama appears to hold a lead in the Electoral College is reason to be suspicious that Mr. Romney leads in the popular vote.

But here's another way to think about the issue, returning to the competing hypothesis that we articulated earlier. If the national polls are right and the state polls are wrong, then Mr. Romney might be favored right now. If the state polls are right and the national polls are wrong, then Mr. Obama is ahead. And if you take them both very literally - meaning that Mr. Obama is ahead in the Electoral College but behind in the popular vote - then he'd win another term, after a very long election night.

Two of the three hypothesis yield an Obama win. It's something of a coincidence that our model now shows Mr. Obama with almost exactly a 2-in-3 chance of winning (as do Vegas betting lines), but it isn't the worst way to think about the election.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



522 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 11, 2012 Thursday


In New Poll, Kaine Ahead in Virginia Senate Race


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 552 words



HIGHLIGHT: Tim Kaine, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, has the lead over his Republican challenger, George Allen, in a marquee Senate race that will help determine if Democrats maintain control of the Senate.


Tim Kaine, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, has the lead in his race to join the Senate, despite a torrent of negative advertising from third-party groups on behalf of his Republican rival, George Allen, the state's former senator.

Mr. Kaine holds a seven-point lead over Mr. Allen, according to a survey of likely voters by Quinnipiac University, The New York Times and CBS News. The poll shows Mr. Kaine with 51 percent to Mr. Allen's 44 percent, beyond the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. A separate poll in Virginia by NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist has the race essentially tied with Mr. Kaine only one percentage point ahead.

The race is one of the marquee Senate battles in the nation and the outcome will help decide whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate.

Mr. Kaine, who also served for two years as President Obama's choice to head the Democratic National Committee, is matching Mr. Obama's performance in the commonwealth. The same survey shows the president at 51 percent, five points ahead of Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president.

Crossroads GPS, a conservative group, has been advertising against Mr. Kaine for weeks. The latest ad hits Mr. Kaine for supporting a Congressional deficit deal that threatens deep defense cuts if lawmakers do not reach an agreement to avoid them.

"Tim Kaine supported the Washington budget deal, a deal that could destroy over 500,000 jobs in the defense industry," the ad says. "Tim Kaine didn't put Virginia first, so, Virginia, don't put Tim Kaine in the Senate."

But Mr. Kaine's direct-to-camera ads comparing his record to that of Mr. Allen appear to be working. He is leading in the state even as voters there give high marks to the state's current Republican governor, Bob McDonnell. Fifty-two percent of voters said they approve of the way Mr. McDonnell is handling his job as governor.

The matchup between Mr. Kaine and Mr. Allen pits two of the state's most experienced politicians against each other. Both men served as governor in the past. Mr. Allen had served one term in the Senate starting in 2000, but was defeated in 2006 by Senator Jim Webb, who decided to retire this year.

Mr. Webb's decision cleared the way for Mr. Kaine, who would join fellow Senator Mark R. Warner, another Democrat, if he wins in November.

Strategists for Mr. Allen and Mr. Kaine have both said they think the race is likely to be affected by the clash between the president and Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama's current success in the state may be helping to lift Mr. Kaine's Senate bid.

But in the end, both races could come down to efforts to turn out voters in the state's different population centers.

Mr. Allen's campaign, like most Republicans, is targeting conservative voters in the state's rural areas, the military communities around Virginia Beach, and the Republican exurbs. Mr. Kaine is counting on the massive population center in Northern Virginia, African-Americans and the state's rapidly-growing Hispanic communities.



LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



523 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 11, 2012 Thursday


Vice-Presidential Debate Fact-Checks and Updates


BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 12031 words



HIGHLIGHT: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan square off on Thursday night in Danville, Ky. in the only vice presidential debate. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern.


Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan square off on Thursday night in Danville, Ky., in the only vice-presidential debate. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern. The Times will be providing updates and analysis on our live dashboard. You can also follow along on Twitter @thecaucus, or follow our list of Times journalists covering the debate.

10:42 A.M. | Fact Check: An 'Aggressive' Timeline for Afghanistan

Mr. Biden said that the troop withdrawal schedule President Obama had established for Afghanistan was fully supported by Joint Chiefs of Staff. But there was some concern among top generals.

General David Petraeus, who was the commander in Afghanistan, at the time, told Congress that he would have preferred a slower withdrawal timetable so that American forces sent for the troop surge Mr. Obama ordered could have remained at peak strength for more of the fighting season.

On June 22, 2011, General Petraeus said that the withdrawal schedule Mr. Obama picked "was a more aggressive formulation, if you will, in terms of the time line" than what he and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs had recommended.

Admiral Mullen told Congress that "the President's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept. More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course. But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the President, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take."

- Michael Gordon

10:23 A.M. | Fact Check: 20 Million People to Lose Coverage?

Mr. Ryan said that according to the Congressional Budget Office, up to 20 million people are projected to "lose their health care" when President Obama's health care law goes into effect. Mr. Ryan was going out on a limb.

He was referring to a report the nonpartisan budget office put out in March on how the law would affect the number of people getting health insurance through their employer. But the report's baseline estimate was that between three and five million fewer people, net, would get coverage through their job each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case under prior law. And the report said that some of those people would choose to stop getting insurance through their employer, to take advantage of new federal subsidies that will help people with incomes up to four times the poverty level buy private insurance through new state- or federally-run marketplaces called exchanges.

The baseline projections in the report assume that many others, even if their employer stopped offering coverage due to the law, would also qualify for the new subsidies or for Medicaid, which will expand to cover more low-income people.

The report did predict that as many as 20 million fewer people could get employer-sponsored insurance under the law. But it was the most drastic of four possible scenarios it predicted, based on a range of assumptions. The assumptions used to arrive at the estimate of 20 million "have only rarely been reported in the research literature," according to the report.

In another scenario, the report predicted a net gain of three million people with employer-sponsored insurance as a result of the law. The other scenarios predicted declines of 10 million and 12 million people with employer-sponsored coverage.

Overall, the report said, the number of uninsured people is projected to drop by 29 million by 2019 due to the law.

- Abby Goodnough

10:20 A.M. | Fact Check: Religious Institutions' and Contraception

Mr. Romney has portrayed as an attack on religious freedom a provision of Mr. Obama's health care law requiring most insurance plans offered by employers to include free birth control coverage. One Romney ad accuses Mr. Obama of using the law "to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith."

From the start, churches and other houses of worship were exempt from the contraceptive requirement. Still, it provoked furious criticism from Roman Catholic institutions and some other religious groups. The administration ultimately offered what Mr. Obama described as "an accommodation" for church-affiliated schools, universities, hospitals and charities. They would not have to provide or pay for contraceptive coverage, but their female employees from their insurance companies at no cost.

Mr. Romney supported a subsequent Republican effort, known as the Blunt amendment, to let employers and health insurance companies deny coverage for contraceptives and other items they object to on religious or moral grounds. But the Senate in March narrowly voted to kill the effort.

Mr. Romney has said he would abolish the contraceptive coverage requirement.

- Abby Goodnough

10:17 A.M. | Fact Check: Biden Blurs Voting Record on Spending

When Mr. Biden itemized a number of actions the Bush administration took with Mr. Ryan's support that added to the debt, he blurred his own record at the time in the Senate, giving the misleading impression that he had voted against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he supported.

"And, by the way, they talk about this Great Recession as if it fell out of the sky, like, 'Oh, my goodness, where did it come from?' " Mr. Biden said at the debate. "It came from this man voting to put two wars on a credit card, to at the same time put a prescription drug benefit on the credit card, a trillion-dollar tax cut for the very wealthy. I was there. I voted against them. I said, no, we can't afford that. And now, all of a sudden, these guys are so seized with the concern about the debt that they created."

Mr. Biden did vote against the Bush tax cuts in both 2001 and 2003. And while he voted for an initial version of the Medicare drug benefit, he voted against the final bill.

But Mr. Biden did vote to authorize President Bush to use force against Iraq, and he voted during the week of the Sept. 11 attacks to give the president "all necessary and appropriate force" to respond to the terror attacks.

- Michael Cooper and Kitty Bennett

0:18 A.M. | That's a Wrap

The vice-presidential debate has ended and the candidates are going home. The Caucus live blog has ended, too. You can rewatch the entire debate, read the transcript and scroll through our fact check feature, and be sure come back to The Caucus and the rest of NYTimes.com for continuing coverage.

And don't forget to download the Election 2012 iPhone app, which smartly combines our coverage with the best from political news sites, Twitter and blogs from around the Web.

- The New York Times

0:07 A.M. | Fact Check: Positions on Abortion

Mr. Ryan said Thursday that the Democratic Party supported abortion "without restriction and with taxpayer funding'' under the health care law signed by President Obama in 2010.

Under the law, health insurance plans are generally allowed to cover abortion. If they cover the procedure, they cannot use federal money to pay for it. People who enroll in such plans will generally have to make separate payments - - one for abortion coverage and one for everything else - - and insurers must keep the money in separate accounts.

Starting in 2014, the federal government will spend tens of billions of dollars subsidizing comprehensive health insurance for low- and moderate-income people. Opponents of abortion say that while the government will not directly pay for abortion, it will subsidize some insurance plans that provide coverage for abortion services.

In nearly 14 years as a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan has been an ardent, unwavering foe of abortion rights and has tried to cut off federal money for family planning.

In the debate Thursday, Mr. Ryan said, "The policy of a Romney administration is to oppose abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.'' He suggested that decisions on the legality of abortion should be made by Congress, not courts.

"We don't think that unelected judges should make this decision,'' Mr. Ryan said. Rather, he said, "people, through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process, should make this determination.''

In an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard in 2010, Mr. Ryan said, "I'm as pro-life as a person gets.''

He has voted for legislation that would cut off federal money for Planned Parenthood and the Title X family planning program and establish criminal penalties for certain doctors who perform the procedure known as partial birth abortion.

He is a co-sponsor of a bill that would define fetuses as persons entitled to full protection under the law.

The bill declares, "The life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning or its functional equivalent, irrespective of sex, health, function or disability, defect, stage of biological development or condition of dependency, at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.''

The concept of personhood is a fundamental tenet of the anti-abortion movement.

Like most Republicans, Mr. Ryan has strenuously opposed the new health care law. He has criticized Mr. Obama's efforts to guarantee free insurance coverage of contraceptives for women, including those employed by Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies.

In the debate, Mr. Ryan said the administration was "assaulting the religious liberties of this country'' through such policies.

"They're infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals,'' Mr. Ryan said. "Our church should not have to sue our federal government to maintain their religious liberties.''

The 2010 health care law requires most insurers to cover preventive services without co-payments or deductibles. Under the administration policy, most health plans must cover birth control for women - - all contraceptive drugs and devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration - - as well as sterilization procedures.

Church-affiliated universities, hospitals and charities would not have to provide or pay for such coverage. Instead, the White House says, coverage for birth control could be offered to women directly by their employers' insurance companies, "with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.''

The administration has not said exactly how such arrangements would work for church-affiliated employers that serve as their own insurers.

Mr. Biden defended the administration's approach.

"With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church,'' Mr. Biden said, "let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy - any hospital - none has to either refer contraception. None has to pay for contraception. None has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide.''

- Robert Pear

11:59 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Spin Alley

- Max Whittaker

11:08 P.M. | Fact Check: Romney's Bipartisan Record

Seeking a contrast to Mr. Obama's difficulties in dealing with Republican legislators, Mr. Ryan said that as Massachusetts governor, Mr. Romney "found common ground" with a legislature that was 87 percent Democratic, meeting each week with Democratic leaders. The result, he said, was a state budget that was balanced each year without tax increases.

Mr. Romney did sometimes worked with the Democratic legislature as governor, particularly in the last 18 months of his term, when he won approval of a version of his plan for universal health insurance. And the two sides did agree in his first year in office to cut $1.6 billion from the Massachusetts budget in the face of a revenue crisis triggered by the collapse of the dot-com boom.

The state did balance its budget during Mr. Romney's term, as Mr. Ryan said. But as most people understand it, that achievement did not come without tax increases. By closing what Mr. Romney called business "tax loopholes" - in effect, increasing tax liabilities - the state raised an addition $375 million annually, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. Mr. Romney's administration also raised another $375 million a year by increasing a bevy of fees on state services.

But beyond that, independent observers say, Mr. Romney's bipartisan achievements were sparse, and his relations with the legislature frequently distant and acrimonious.

Bipartisanship "worked out extremely well on his signature issue, health care," said Peter Ubertaccio, a scholar of Massachusetts politics who heads the political science department at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass. "But if you look at his willingness to go to the other, side, to listen to them, embrace them challenge them to come up with a bill, he approached much of his policymaking as a chief executive with little in the way of results."

He and others say Mr. Romney had little patience with the horse-trading and backslapping of Massachusetts politics, and disdained the personal cultivating of rank-and-file legislators that bred good will. He opened his four-year term in 2003 by vetoing the Democratic leadership's plan to create new committees and raise salaries of some chairmen. The legislature rejected outright the keystone of his legislative agenda, a sweeping overhaul of state government and the public university system.

That was but the start of a slide in relations, said Jeffrey Berry, a Tufts University expert on state politics. In 2004, Mr. Romney mounted a $3 million election campaign to unseat Democratic legislators, employing a direct-mail barrage which, among other things, implied that some Democrats had cast a vote that would hinder the tracking of convicted pedophiles. When Democrats protested, Republicans replied that they had employed similarly aggressive tactics.

By the end of that year, The Boston Globe reported, House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi was drawing laughs by noting that Mr. Romney had hugged him after his swearing-in - and that Mr DiMasi wound up with frostbite. (Some former Romney aides called Mr. DiMasi the legislature's main obstructionist, saying he played a crucial role in blocking the governor's legislative efforts in 2005 and 2006.)

By the end of his four years, most of Mr. Romney's major initiatives, including pension reform, reinstating the death penalty, education reform and reorganizing the state transportation department, had failed to pass.

In the first presidential debate, Mr. Romney cited weekly meetings with House and Senate Democratic leaders as evidence of his success in building bridges to Democratic lawmakers. Those meetings were fairly common during his first years in office. But they grew more sporadic as his term lengthened. By 2006 - when Mr. Romney was out of the state for all or part of 219 days, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination - they became rare events.

- Michael Wines

11:15 P.M. | Fact Check: When Would Romney Leave Afghanistan?

Vice President Biden sought to suggest that a Romney administration might keep troops in Afghanistan indefinitely. "With regard to Afghanistan, he [Mr. Obama] said he would end the war in 2014," Mr. Biden said. "Governor Romney said we should not set a date, No. 1, and No. 2, with regard to 2014, it depends." Is Mr. Biden right?

Mr. Ryan said that Mr. Romney embraced the 2014 timeline for troop withdrawals. Mr. Ryan also said, "We don't want to lose the gains we've gotten" - but he did not precisely explain how a Romney administration would do this better than the Obama administration.

Mr. Romney's exact position on troop withdrawals has, at times, been unclear, and that has opened him up to attacks that he might keep regular infantry troops there longer, compared with the Obama administration's pledge to remove all regular combat troops by 2014.

While Mr. Romney has for some time broadly embraced the same 2014 timeline, he has often qualified the timeline by saying that he would first seek advice from commanders on the ground, which his critics say has been a way to leave himself wiggle room to leave combat troops in Afghanistan after 2014.

This week, a Romney official did not specifically answer a question about whether Mr. Romney has ruled out keeping regular combat brigades in Afghanistan after 2014, as opposed to keeping a small contingent of military trainers and special operations forces after that date, as the White House has spoken of doing.

Mr. Romney and other Republicans have accused Mr. Obama of undermining the war effort in Afghanistan by setting timelines for troop withdrawals, thus giving the Taliban incentive to wait things out, and Mr. Ryan repeated this attack at the debate, saying, "We don't want to embolden our enemies to hold and wait out for us."

But troop withdrawal timelines are an issue that underscores a problem Mr. Romney has often faced this campaign: Trying to draw a distinction with Mr. Obama on foreign policy while having a hard time articulating specific policy disagreements. Mr. Romney said in his Oct. 8 foreign policy speech that he "will pursue a real and successful transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014," adding that he would "weigh the best advice" of commanders.

But critics say Mr. Romney's own embrace of the 2014 timeline has undermined his major criticism - that Mr. Obama's timelines are wrong because they embolden the Taliban. One of Mr. Romney's advisers, Dan Senor, speaking on Fox News, referred to bringing troops home in 2014 by saying, "In that respect, our position is the same as the president's."

The Fox News host, Bret Baier, responded incredulously, "But aren't you saying that that's exactly the same - it's a calendar date on the page that gives the Taliban a date that they are going to step in?"

Analysts say Mr. Romney has little choice but to back the Obama-NATO timeline: Despite the more hawkish language, Mr. Romney could not risk facing charges that he wants to extend an unpopular - and in the view of many experts - unwinnable war.

- Richard A. Oppel Jr.

10:58 P.M. | Fact Check: Did Obama Apologize for American Values?

Mr. Ryan suggested that Mr. Obama has apologized for American values, similar to repeated assertions made by Republicans that the president went on an "apology tour" after his inauguration, or that he has sought to apologize for American principles. "What we should not be apologizing for is standing up for our values," Mr. Ryan said at the debate. Are those charges correct?

The claim of Mr. Obama apologizing for American values has been repeatedly found to be inaccurate: While Mr. Obama has acknowledged American failings at times - and, like his predecessor, George W. Bush, has on at least one occasion apologized for a specific act of American wrongdoing abroad - he has never explicitly apologized for American values or diplomacy.

Nevertheless, this notion has been a reliable attack line at Romney campaign events. Republicans have sought to use a number of excerpts from Mr. Obama's speeches or interviews to make their case. One of the most commonly used is a 2009 speech in France in which Mr. Obama said that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." Critics typically ignore what Mr. Obama said next: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad."

In February, Mr. Obama did apologize to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, after American military personnel were involved in burning copies of the Koran, an episode that spawned violence throughout Afghanistan. But his expression of regret came after Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the American commander in Afghanistan, had already apologized. It also brought to mind the apology then-President Bush made in 2004 to King Abdullah of Jordan for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

In an interview in February with Fox News, Mr. Romney seemed to object to the Koran-burning apology, saying, "For us to be apologizing at a time like this is something which is very difficult for the American people to countenance."

But Mr. Ryan expressed a somewhat different view. Asked during the debate whether the United States should have apologized "for Americans burning Korans in Afghanistan, should the U.S. apologize for U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses?" Mr. Ryan responded: "Oh gosh yes. Urinating on Taliban corpses?"

- Richard A. Oppel Jr.

10:45 P.M. | Candidates Save Their Best Arguments for the End

The two candidates gave their best closing statements before the real ones.

Asked by Ms. Raddatz what they would say to a military hero about the tone of the political campaign, Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan both offered heart-felt answers that got to the root of their campaigns.

Mr. Biden said he would ask the hero about which presidential candidate would be more likely to help the middle class recover from a devastating economic collapse.

"Whether or not Governor Romney or President Obama has the conviction to help lift up the middle class, help restore them to where they were when this great recession hit," Mr. Biden said.

He said he would tell the hero to "take a look at whether the president of the United States has acted wisely in the use of force," and he compared that to what he called "slipshod comments" about foreign policy from Mr. Romney.

Mr. Ryan offered a crisp summation of his critique of Mr. Obama's tenure in office, perhaps stealing from his closing statement.

He said Mr. Obama had left Americans with a "string of broken promises" on health care, taxes and the deficit. On the debt crisis, he accused the president of failing to provide a real budget plan.

"The president likes to say he's got a plan. He gave a speech," Mr. Ryan said. "You see, that's what we get in this administration. Speeches. What we need is leadership."

- Michael D. Shear

10:40 P.M. | Issue of Abortion Raised In Answers on Faith

If there was one subject that hard-core Democrats wanted raised, it was abortion and contraception. Mr. Biden did not disappoint.

Prompted by a question about the Roman Catholic faith of both men, Mr. Biden warned that a Republican administration would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal.

"Just ask yourself, with Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for Mr. Romney," Mr. Biden said, "who is he likely to appoint? You think he's likely to appoint someone like Scalia?"

Mr. Ryan said that he personally believed that "life begins at conception," but said that the policy of a Romney administration would be to oppose abortion except in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother.

Mr. Ryan accused Mr. Obama's administration of trying to force religious institutions to pay for contraception, a charge that Mr. Biden rejected as wrong.

And Mr. Ryan said that the Republican ticket did not "think that unelected judges should make this decision."

- Michael D. Shear

10:40 P.M. | Fact Check: Would Ryan Budget Slash Early Education?

Mr. Biden charged that Mr. Ryan's budget, which was passed by Republicans in the House, would have cut early childhood education for 200,000 children. Is that accurate?

Mr. Ryan's plan did call for major spending cuts and would undoubtedly cut education spending - but it did not specify exactly which programs would be cut or by how much. Democrats have based their estimates of its impact on the assumption that the cuts would be spread evenly across the board, an approach Republicans say they would not take.

So what might the effects be? Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, testified earlier this year that Mr. Ryan's budget could have "disastrous consequences for America's children."

Mr. Duncan estimated that that the Ryan budget could reduce spending on education for low-income, minority, rural and tribal children by $2.7 billion in 2014. He said that could affect 9,000 schools serving more than 3.8 million students, and jeopardize the jobs of as up to 38,000 teachers and aides. He said that aid to help students with disabilities could face $2.2 billion in cuts, which he said would translate to the loss of nearly 30,000 special education teachers, aides and other staff. And he said that some 200,000 children could lose access to Head Start.

Republicans have said that while the budget calls for steep spending cuts, it does not specify them. Mr. Ryan himself has often questioned whether federal spending translates to better results. "Stagnant student achievement levels and exploding deficits have demonstrated that massive amounts of federal funding and top-down interventions are not the way to provide America's students with a high-quality education," he said in a statement on his Web site.

- Michael Cooper

10:33 P.M. | Fact Check: Troops on the Ground in Syria?

Mr. Ryan ruled out putting troops on the ground in Syria unless it "is in the national interest of the American people." How much did that diverge from what the administration says?

Mr. Ryan essentially put himself in a place pretty close to where President Obama and Mr. Biden have been: that America's options are limited if putting ground troops into the country is off the table.

The essence of the Ryan argument was that the Obama administration had acted too slowly and given Russia a veto at the United Nations. But that veto - which the Russians possess as a member of the Security Council - wasn't about taking military action against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who is clinging to power. It was about sanctions.

So in the end, the two men, while emphasizing their differences, seemed to come out in the same place: the only event that would prompt America to go into Syria would be the need to secure its chemical weapons stockpiles. Anything short of that was not worth the risks.

- David E. Sanger

10:27 P.M. | Fact Check: American Troops Out of Afghanistan in 2014?

Mr. Biden could not be more emphatic: By the end of 2014 all Americans will be out of Afghanistan. He said it, then said it again, insisting it is "the responsibility of the Afghans" to secure their own country. Was he accurate?

Well, sort of.

What Mr. Biden was skipping over was the administration's plan for an "enduring presence" of 10,000 to 15,000 troops - mostly behind the high walls of military bases - to act as a tripwire to keep the Taliban from taking Kabul, and to keep an eye on Pakistan.

The enduring presence has not been agreed to yet by the Afghan government, but the administration believes that President Karzai will have little choice, because his own forces will need backup. But the reality is that the American presence is as much focused on Pakistan, and its nuclear stockpile, as it is on Afghanistan. From the base in Afghanistan, the United States would keep bomb search teams, drone operators and special forces.

- David E. Sanger

10:27 P.M. | Debate Pace a Function of Format?

If the presidential debate in Denver last week lacked much in the way of fireworks between the candidates, the vice-presidential debate in Kentucky more than made up for it.

One contributing factor could have been the change in format. The first debate, which was divided into six 15-minute blocks, allowed for longer, more stump speech-like answers, fewer opportunities for the moderator to interject and less interaction between the candidates. Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney stood far apart on the stage, each behind his own lectern.

The vice-presidential debate, however, was divided up into nine 10-minute segments. The pace was noticeably quicker, and the confrontations between the candidates sharper. Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan sat just an arm's length from each other at a table.

Ms. Raddatz, who moderated the debate, seemed to use her close proximity to the candidates to her advantage. She kept them - mostly - from running over their allotted two-minute responses. And she was able to interrupt without having them ignore her.

The presidential debate next week will provide a format that should move even faster. It will be a town hall-style meeting in which audience members ask questions. The candidates will each have two minutes to respond. Then the moderator, CNN's Candy Crowley, will have one additional minute to facilitate a discussion.

For the final debate on Oct. 22, the format will be the same as the first one.

- Jeremy W. Peters

10:21 P.M. | Foreign Policy, Front and Center

There may not have been as substantive a debate about foreign policy in the entire 2012 campaign as is taking place here.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan are both engaging in a substantive, heated discussion about Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Mr. Ryan accused the Obama administration of "outsourcing" its foreign policy to the United Nations and of letting Russia veto American actions.

Mr. Biden accused Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney of "loose talk" in Syria and challenged Mr. Ryan to explain whether he and his running mate support a ground war in Syria.

"What more would they do other than put American boots on the ground?" he asked. "The last thing America needs is to get involved in another ground war in the Middle East."

When Mr. Ryan declined to directly answer the question, Mr. Biden said: "What would my friend do differently? You notice how he never answers the question."

- Michael D. Shear

10:21 P.M. | Fact Check: Would Romney Military Plan Add $2 Trillion?

During a rapid-fire exchange of talking points on defense spending, Mr. Biden argued that the Romney-Ryan military spending plans would add $2 trillion to the budget and that the military itself does not want many of the items in question at a time the nation simply cannot afford all of them.

Mr. Ryan rebutted the $2 trillion price tag and said that, first of all, a Romney administration would not cut the defense budget by $1 trillion.

He seems to have gotten that number by adding together the $450 billion-plus defense spending cuts proposed by the Obama administration over the next decade and the approximately $500 billion in cuts that would be required if Congress fails to reach a budget accord.

But that second cut, under a program called sequestration, has not happened yet - and both Democrats and Republicans are trying to avoid it.

Looking at Mr. Romney's proposals - more warships, more air wings, a more expanded military presence around the world - shows that they could cost $2 trillion, or maybe not.

Here's why any exact price tag is hard to calculate. Mr. Romney has pledged, for example, that as president he would build 15 new warships per year. But even the candidate's top national security advisers say they have not worked out the exact mix of warships they would build among a shopping list of littoral combat ships, destroyers, submarines and so on.

It is impossible to state with certainty the cost of 15 anything - bicycles, books, bottles of fruit juice - unless you knew exactly what 15 you are buying.

And the discussion among Romney advisers about the possibility of ordering up a new class of frigate not even on the drawing board yet injects a potential purchase that simply has no price tag today. The vagueness is both a help and a hindrance to the Romney campaign

Mr. Ryan also repeated a statement that the American Navy is the smallest in almost a century.

True, today's Navy is much smaller than in past generations. But Navy commanders also point out that each individual warship at sea today is far more capable than any individual predecessor in that class of vessel.

- Thom Shanker

10:22 P.M. | Fact Check: Waste and the Stimulus

Did the $787 billion stimulus package, overseen by Mr. Biden, suffer from waste and fraud, as Mr. Ryan contended?

Mr. Ryan charged that the stimulus, which Mr. Biden oversaw and was sometimes described as the "sheriff" of, was plagued by waste. But while there was plenty of second-guessing about some of the uses that the $787 billion stimulus was put to, very little of the money was lost to outright criminal fraud, according to government officials.

Michael Wood, the executive director of the Recovery Board, which oversaw the spending, said in a statement last month that out of the $276 billion that the stimulus allocated for contracts, grants and loans to tens of thousands of recipients, officials had documented only $11.1 million lost to fraud. He said that the 29 inspectors general with oversight responsibility had more than 1,900 investigations under way, and that 598 had resulted in convictions and judgments.

"For a program with so much money in the pipeline," he wrote, "the fraud numbers are surprisingly low."

When the first chairman of the Recovery Board, Earl Devaney, retired at the end of 2011, Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement praising his tenure.

"As chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, he has introduced innovative techniques to combat waste, fraud and mismanagement,'' Mr. Issa said in the statement. "I strongly believe the Devaney Model is the future of protecting taxpayer dollars and must be applied to all federal spending."

- Michael Cooper

10:15 P.M. | Fact Check: A Failure to Safeguard the Libyan Mission?

The debate started with the moderator, Martha Raddatz, focusing on the terrorist attacks last month in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11. "Wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden?" Ms. Raddatz asked.

Mr. Biden did not answer the question. Instead, he mourned the loss of the Americans and vowed that the government would "get to the bottom of it."

Republicans have singled out Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, for criticism, and Mr. Ryan continued that critique. On Sept. 16, Ms. Rice said that the attack on the compound in Benghazi began with the angry protest about an anti-Islamic film that was "hijacked" by extremists. It was not until three days later that Matthew G. Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first administration official to call the assault a terrorist attack.

Ms. Rice said she was using information provided to her by American intelligence agencies, a defense Mr. Biden repeated here.

"The intelligence community told us that," Mr. Biden said. "As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment."

That is, indeed, what the office of the Director of National Intelligence said on Sept. 28 - that the assessment had changed with new information.

But in the hours after the Benghazi attack, American officials have said, spy agencies intercepted electronic communications from fighters from Ansar al-Shariah, a local extremist group, who began bragging to an operative with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terror group's North African franchise. Another intercept captured cellphone conversations by militants on the grounds of the smoldering American mission that suggested links to, or sympathies for, the regional Qaeda group.

Republicans have pointed to this information as evidence that American officials suspected the involvement of the Qaeda franchise much earlier than the administration publicly acknowledged.

Mr. Romney has criticized the Obama administration for initially playing down Al Qaeda's possible connection to the attacks last month in Benghazi, but some of his own statements on the assault have been misleading.

In a major foreign policy address on Monday, Mr. Romney said the attack was "likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on Sept. 11, 2001."

This suggests that Al Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan, which planned and carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was somehow responsible for the attack in Libya. That's misleading. American intelligence analysts now believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to Al Qaeda's franchise in North Africa, not the main Al Qaeda hierarchy.

In his speech on Monday, Mr. Romney was also imprecise in assessing the strength of Al Qaeda's global affiliates. He said the terrorist group "remains a strong force in Yemen and Somalia, in Libya and other parts of North Africa, in Iraq, and now in Syria."

While it is true that Qaeda franchises in those regions have been resurgent, the Qaeda-linked group in Somalia, Shabab, has suffered major territorial losses in the past year and the organization has influence through affiliated groups or individuals in Syria and Libya, not a dedicated presence of its own on the ground there.

- Eric Schmitt

10:16 P.M. | Fact Check: Tax Increases on Small Businesses

Would President Obama's plan to repeal income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans kill jobs? Possibly, economists say, but the Clinton-era tax rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were responsible for creating millions of jobs.

Mr. Ryan, like his running mate, Mr. Romney, warned that Mr. Obama's plan to let the Bush-era income tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans expire could hurt small businesses. Mr. Biden countered that 97 percent of small businesses do not earn enough to be hit by the higher rates, a number borne out by the Joint Committee on Taxation of Congress.

Mr. Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts on income above $200,000 for individuals and income above $250,000 for households, raising the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now. Some small businesses, which file taxes as "S corporations," would be hit by the higher rates, but the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that only 3 percent would earn enough to be hit by the new, higher top marginal rates. And not all of those businesses are exactly small: thousands of them would have receipts of more than $50 million a year, the committee found. The Romney campaign noted that those few businesses play an important role and said that they should not be burdened with higher taxes.

Of the businesses that would be subjected to the higher rates, many are sole proprietors - a classification so amorphous it can include everyone from corporate executives who earn income on rental property to entertainers, hedge fund managers and investment bankers.

Pluralities of likely voters and independent voters said in recent polls that they supported letting the Bush-era tax cuts on higher earners expire.

Would repealing those tax cuts kill jobs? Economists generally agree that raising taxes, and taking money that would otherwise cycle through the economy, can cost jobs; that is one of the reasons that Mr. Obama's stimulus plan included tax cuts. But it is worth noting that the rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were last seen during the Clinton administration - a time when the nation created more 22.7 million jobs, as the Romney campaign has noted.

- Michael Cooper

10:13 P.M. | Moderator Helps Set the Tone

Ms. Raddatz is being much more aggressive than Mr. Lehrer was last week, and it has helped set the tone of the debate.

Among the criticisms that were leveled at the participants of the first presidential debate was the idea that Mr. Lehrer, the moderator, didn't press the candidates enough to explain themselves.

Ms. Raddatz has said she intended to let the candidates have exchanges with each other. But she also said she would press them, too.

She has.

On issues of taxes, Afghanistan and Iranian nuclear weapons, among others, she repeatedly asked follow-up questions of the two men, seeking explanations and clarifications.

About halfway through, she also has been more aggressive in enforcing timelines, interrupting long answers to move on to other subjects.

That approach has produced a faster-paced debate - though, to be fair to Mr. Lehrer, the candidates themselves were on fire Thursday night. So maybe the pace was set by them, not her.

- Michael D. Shear

10:10 P.M. | How Much Will Style Define the Debate?

One of the big questions in the next 24 hours is whether this debate will be judged more on style than the detail of the exchanges. That is something the Obama campaign is worrying about - and the Romney campaign is hoping for - as this debate plays out.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly made the case against Mr. Ryan - and Mr. Romney - that Mr. Obama did not during last week's presidential debate. But substance aside, will Mr. Biden be scored for his style? Will his laughing, eye-rolling and interrupting be seen as too pushy, too aggressive, too disrespectful?

Democrats will certainly argue that is the worst kind of political analysis - style over substance. But as Al Gore can certainly attest, that often is the way debates are judged. And Republicans will surely push that line in the hours ahead.

Will it work? Mr. Biden is not running for president, so at least in theory, he can afford to sacrifice some likability in the service of firing up the Democratic base and putting into the political atmosphere the Democratic arguments that Mr. Obama failed to make last week.

- Adam Nagourney

10:08 P.M. | Fact Check: 100 Department of Energy Investigations?

Mr. Ryan, in discussing the 2009 stimulus package, said that the Department of Energy's inspector general had initiated 100 criminal investigations involving fraud in the spending program, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The claim is based on statements from the agency's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, who told Congress last November that he had begun 100 such investigations into what he called "various schemes, including the submission of false information, claims for unallowable or unauthorized expenses and other improper uses of Recovery Act funds."

Mr. Friedman said that the investigations had led to five criminal prosecutions and recovery of more than $2.3 million.

According to an Associated Press account of his testimony, Mr. Friedman said the fraud was a result in part of the fact that very few "shovel ready" projects were available for government investment at the time the package was enacted. The Department of Energy received more than $35 billion in one-time funds and had no infrastructure and few people to oversee such a huge inflow, the inspector general said.

- John M. Broder

10:05 P.M. | Debate Highlights Differences, Especially on Taxes

Anyone looking for a clash of philosophy found it in this debate, especially on taxes.

Mr. Biden angrily denounced the tax proposal forwarded by Mr. Ryan and Mr. Romney, calling it an attack on the middle class.

"This is unconscionable," Mr. Biden said "The middle class got knocked on their heels. The great recession crushed them. They need some help now."

By contrast, he said, the Bush tax cuts on wealthy people should be allowed to expire.

Mr. Ryan offered a drastically different vision, saying that the Democratic approach would be an increase of tax rates on small businesses that would cost 700,000 jobs.

"There aren't enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending," Mr. Ryan said.

Turning to the camera, he said to viewers, "Watch out, middle class, the tax bill is coming to you."

The debate offered viewers a clear picture of the differences between the two campaigns - a difference that was at best muddled by the performance at the first debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney.

But the exchange was also less civil, with Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan repeatedly interrupting each other. Mr. Biden was especially aggressive, offering retorts to just about every fact that Mr. Ryan tried to offer.

"Not mathematically possible," Mr. Biden repeatedly said to Mr. Ryan's claim about the Republican tax cut plan.

- Michael D. Shear

10:02 P.M. | Fact Check: Has Obama Been Inconsistent on Iran?

"How are we going to prevent war?" Mr. Biden demanded at one point, after Mr. Ryan charged that the administration had been wildly inconsistent - vowing that Iran would never be permitted to get a weapon, then backtracking and saying that war with Iran would be a disaster. Here, both sides have the facts on their side.

Mr. Ryan is correct that the administration's language on the utility of a military attack has been all over the map. While officials routinely say "all options are on the table," at various points both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the chairman of the joint chiefs, Martin E. Dempsey, have said that an attack on Iran could drive the nuclear program further underground, and may set it back for only a while.

But Mr. Biden was right when he said that, while he couldn't go into classified data, "we feel quite confident" that the United States could deal a military blow to Iran's nuclear program. The question is how big a blow.

Most experts say that only one weapon in the American arsenal, the Massive Ordinance Penetrator - a weapon the Israelis don't possess - could pierce the deep underground nuclear enrichment center at Fordow. That's the facility the United States and Israel are concerned about because it produces a form of uranium close to bomb grade.

Interestingly, both men agreed that they think there is more time available than Israel has suggested to deal with the problem - and that it cannot happen by next spring. Mr. Biden said that even if Iran had the nuclear fuel for a bomb, "we will know if they start the process of building a nuclear weapon." Perhaps the United States will, but such signals have been missed before.

- David E. Sanger

9:53 P.M. | Fact Check: Comparing Medicare Plans

No program faces bigger changes under Mr. Ryan's budget than Medicare, the program providing health coverage for the elderly, and his plan to overhaul the program forms the basis in many respects for Mr. Romney's plan - and Mr. Biden just took it on head on.

Mr. Ryan's plan calls for reshaping the curren, government-sponsored defined benefit fee for service insurance system. Under his plan, which would begin a decade from now, each beneficiary would receive a fixed amount of money - Democrats call it a voucher - to purchase private insurance or buy into the existing government program. Under the most recent Ryan plan, the money, known as premium support, would rise each year by the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, considerably slower than health care's current rate of inflation.

Mr. Ryan believes competition will drive down the cost of health care, keeping the voucher's value up to date. The Congressional Budget Office projected that over time, the value of the voucher would erode, shifting the extra costs to the elderly.

Critics also warn that under Mr. Ryan's plan, private insurers would try to sign up the healthiest seniors, leaving the sickest, most-expensive-to-cover elderly to enroll in the government program. That would boost the government's costs and steeply erode the value of those recipients' vouchers.

Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Romney's original Medicare plan would have cost future beneficiaries $6,400 in higher costs and questioned what his current plan would cost. But it is difficult to assess what Mr. Romney's plan would cost, because he has not released key details.

Unlike Mr. Ryan, who proposed capping the growth of premium support to the growth of the economy, plus 0.5 percentage points, Mr. Romney has not specified how much money he would give to future beneficiaries to buy coverage, or how fast it would grow - making the effects of his proposal difficult to assess.

The Romney campaign's policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote that while higher-income seniors might be asked to pay more under Mr. Romney's plan, "all seniors will be guaranteed sufficient support because the support is actually set based on what plans will cost."

But the campaign has not said how its plan would work. A question and answer section of the campaign's Web site puts it this way: "How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow? Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost."

Mr. Romney has suggested keeping the growth of the subsidies below the rate of medical inflation in the past. He told the Washington Examiner last December that allowing the subsidies to grow at the rate of medical inflation "would have no particular impact on reining in the excessive cost of our entitlement program."

If his campaign's theory that increased competition among private plans will slow the growth of health care costs proves wrong, future beneficiaries could well face higher costs. (Mr. Romney's pledge to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law would also cost them more, because part of the law helps Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs by filing the so-called doughnut hole.) But without knowing the size of the subsidies or how fast they would grow, it is impossible to assign a dollar value to the cost, as the Obama campaign has tried to do.

- Michael Cooper and Jonathan Weisman

9:54 P.M. | Fact Check: What Did the Stimulus Accomplish?

Mr. Ryan issued a broadside against Mr. Obama's stimulus plan, noting that it did not keep unemployment below 8 percent, as Mr. Obama's economic advisers projected it would before he took office. Mr. Biden defended the bill, saying it helped the economy recover. Who is right?

Before Mr. Obama took office, his economic team issued a paper calling for the passage of a large economic stimulus plan, and printed a chart that they later came to regret, which projected that the unemployment rate would remain below 8 percent with a stimulus plan and hit 9 percent without one. (A footnoted warned: "Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action.")

In fact, the unemployment rate had already hit 8.3 percent in February 2009, Mr. Obama's first full month in office and the month he signed the stimulus into law. It peaked at 10 percent that October and remained at 8.1 percent this August.

The 18-month recession officially ended in June 2009, five months into Mr. Obama's term, as measured by the National Bureau of Economic Research. There is plenty of debate over how effective Mr. Obama's economic policies have been, especially given the painfully slow recovery. But even critics who believe that the president's stimulus law was a missed opportunity - from liberals who say it was too small to conservatives who say it was wasteful and poorly targeted - tend to acknowledge what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found: that it did save or create jobs, lower the unemployment rate and help the economy grow in the short term.

The budget office used ranges to estimate the impact of stimulus. At its peak in the third quarter of 2010, the budget office found, the stimulus saved or created the equivalent of between one million and 5.1 million full-time jobs, lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.4 and two percentage points, and increased the real gross domestic product by between 0.7 percent and 4.1 percent.

Roughly a third of the stimulus came in the form of tax cuts. It also contained aid to state and local governments, infrastructure spending, and aid for people affected by the downturn.

- Michael Cooper

9:51 P.M. | Fact Check: Medicare's $716 Billion Cut?

Mr. Ryan made a claim that journalists and independent fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked: that President Obama and Congressional Democrats raided Medicare benefits of $716 billion. But for Mr. Ryan, the claim has drawn countercharges of hypocrisy on his part.

It was notable enough when Mr. Romney last summer started attacking Mr. Obama for "raiding" Medicare of $716 billion over 10 years to help pay for "Obamacare," and then picked as his running mate Mr. Ryan. As the House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan had included the same Medicare reductions in the Republican budgets he had passed in the House for two years in a row.

What was even more remarkable was that Mr. Ryan began echoing the charge against Democrats within days of joining the Romney ticket. By contrast, two years ago Mr. Ryan mostly was silent on this line of attack when Republicans took it up in the 2010 midterm elections. (Back then they spoke of $500 billion in Medicare cuts; the higher figure now reflects a 10-year period through 2022 instead of 2020; savings grow over time.) Though the attack helped Republicans capture control of the House in 2010, the next spring Mr. Ryan, now elevated to Budget Committee chairman, incorporated the Democrats' Medicare savings into his own 10-year budget. He did so again earlier this year.

Now, as in 2010, the Republican charge has several problems.

The $716 billion in reductions over a decade would come not from Medicare benefits, but from lower reimbursements to health-care providers, drug-makers and insurers selling so-called Medicare Advantage policies. However, economists argue that cuts to providers often result in reduced services, and some doctors do refuse to accept Medicare.

The Democrats' reductions did help offset the cost of Mr. Obama's 2010 health-care law. But rather than reduce Medicare benefits, that law also provided Medicare recipients with more generous coverage of prescription drugs and new benefits like free mammograms and other preventive-care treatments.

Also, the Obama reductions added eight years to the life of Medicare's financially troubled trust fund, to 2024, according to Medicare trustees. If the cuts were restored, the insolvency date could revert to 2016.

- Jackie Calmes

9:46 P.M. | A Different Story From the Split Screen

If the split screen during last week's presidential debate betrayed a slow and unresponsive president, it is revealing something else tonight.

Mr. Biden has been an explosion of reactions all night: laughing, rolling his eyes, grimacing, sighing, furrowing his brow and practically bursting out of his skin to jump at every answer.

The question is: How will it play?

Among hard-core supporters, it will probably be a good thing, giving them the sense that the vice president is aggressively challenging the Republican ticket.

But to others - maybe independents - it may just look as if the vice president had way too many cups of coffee, or maybe Red Bulls.

- Michael D. Shear

9:41 P.M. | Biden Dings Ryan on Stimulus Request

There was a memorable exchange between Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan about the much-maligned stimulus program.

Just as Mr. Ryan started to attack the program by pointing to $90 billion in stimulus funds for green energy projects, Mr. Biden laughed and interrupted.

"Go on our Web site. He sent me two letters saying by the way, 'Can you send me stimulus money?' " Mr. Biden said. " 'It will create growth and jobs.' Those are his words. And now, he's sitting here looking at me?"

Mr. Ryan acknowledged saying he had requested stimulus money on behalf of constituents, saying that "that's what we do."

Before moving on to another subject, Mr. Biden quipped, "By the way, any letter you send me, I'll entertain it."

"I appreciate that, Joe," Mr. Ryan said.

- Michael D. Shear

9:41 P.M. | Fact Check: Budget Cuts and Embassy Security

Mr. Biden made the charged assertion that Mr. Ryan has proposed budget cuts that would affect spending for embassy security.

Mr. Ryan has not made any such specific proposal. But his broader budget proposal would squeeze the nondefense discretionary budget. Presuming that those budget cuts were applied evenly across federal programs, it would result in a $300 million cut for securing and maintaining embassies, the Obama campaign has argued.

"The president certainly doesn¹t need lectures on securing our facilities overseas from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who¹ve proposed slashing funding for our diplomatic and embassy security by $298 million dollars" in 2014, an Obama campaign official told The Hill.

Democrats have repeatedly extrapolated how Mr. Ryan's broader budget proposal might squeeze individual programs over the course of the campaign.

- Annie Lowrey

9:39 P.M. | Fact Check: Was Obama Silent During Iranian Uprising?

Mr. Ryan argued that the President was not vocal enough when Iranians took to the streets to protest how the vote was held that re-elected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is true that Mr. Obama waited for days to say anything, and then was lukewarm in his public support of the protesters. It looked and sounded bad, his aides acknowledged, but they say he feared that any public expression of support would enable the mullahs to claim that the uprising was the work of the C.I.A. and crush it. There is a lot of history there: Back in the 1950s the C.I.A. did help stage a coup in Iran, bringing the shah to power.

In the end, it may not have made a difference: the 2009 protests were crushed, quite brutally.

Publicly, the White House insists it got it right. Privately many of the president's aides have their doubts. And when the next protests came, in Egypt in 2011, Mr. Obama quickly sided with the protesters, after younger members of his staff said he had to get "on the right side of history."

- David E. Sanger

9:36 P.M. | Fact Check: Blocking New Sanctions on Iran?

Paul Ryan argued that "the administration was blocking us every step of the way'' on new sanctions on Iran. While the administration did object to some sanctions Congress was considering, Mr. Biden was closer to right when he argued that "the Ayatollah sees his economy being crippled'' by sanctions imposed over the past few years and that Iran's oil sales have plummeted.

Until Mr. Obama came to office, the United Nations sanctions on Iran were pretty ineffective - travel bans on scientists, some banks on sales of certain kinds of equipment. But they didn't go after the heart of the Iranian economy, oil sales. Mr. Obama did exactly that, step by step, making it hard for Iran to get access to dollars, to get international loans, and even to deliver oil. Even today, scores of loaded Iranian oil tankers are bobbing off the country's coast, with nowhere to go.

The result is that the sanctions in place today are far greater than they were under President Bush. But could they be tighter still, even "crippling'' to use the phrase Mr. Romney likes? (He borrowed it from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.) Certainly they could - but only if other countries agree. Because the U.S. has not had diplomatic relations or any significant trade with Iran for more than three decades, this is all a matter of persuading allies and other countries, and giving them an alternative to Iranian oil. Mr. Romney has not said how he would do that.

What Mr. Obama can't say is that while he ratcheted up the sanctions, he also expanded the covert program to sabotage Iran's nuclear centrifuges - a highly classified program called "Olympic Games.'' It introduced cyber weapons - a computer worm - to destabilize the machinery, buying a bit more time for sanctions to work - but not much.

- David E. Sanger

9:34 P.M. | Vice-Presidential Debate a Contrast With Presidential

It's probably too easy to judge the initial moments of this debate against the debate between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney last week.

So of course we will.

First off, Mr. Biden from the opening moment has been doing what Mr. Obama was scored by Democrats for not doing. He brought the attack to Mr. Romney with the very first question, pivoting from a tough question on Libya to offer a strong contrast between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney on Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Within 25 minutes, Mr. Biden invoked Mr. Romney's 47 percent comment, which never came up at the presidential debate.

If Mr. Obama ceded the stage to Mr. Romney, Mr. Biden - who is anything but retiring by nature - is not.

And it's not only Mr. Biden who is offering a contrast to last week. Martha Raddatz, the moderator, is offering a powerful contrast to the low-key (and much criticized) performance of Jim Lehrer last week. She has been pushing both candidates with tough and challenging questions, and follow-up.

- Adam Nagourney

9:31 P.M. | Fact Check: Where Is the Red Line?

Paul Ryan and Vice President Biden debated what the so-called red line is on moving to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability.

Sometimes, there has been a clear difference in where President Obama and Mitt Romney would draw a red line beyond which they would not let Iran go toward a nuclear weapon. But more often than not, it has been more like a red smudge, giving both candidates maximum flexibility, while each tries to sound more determined to stop the Iranian program.

Mr. Obama's position has been the most consistent. He has said consistently that Iran would not be permitted to get a nuclear weapon. But when pressed about Iran's achieving a weapons "capability'' - that is, to obtain the fuel and technology that would put it just short of having a weapon - he said, "I'm not going to parse that.'' And he hasn't.

Mr. Romney, in contrast, has parsed it - but inconsistently. He usually says he would not allow Iran to have the capability to make a bomb - to be just a few screwdriver turns away, as his aides put it. But in an interview last month with George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Mr. Romney forgot his own position, and made it sound as if he and Mr. Obama were on the same page. A few days later he went back to his old formulation.

It sounds like a small difference, but it is a huge one - technologically and politically. Many experts believe Iran only intends to approach the line of having a weapon, stopping a step or two short. That would enable it to stay inside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. And it would make it harder for Israel, or the United States, to mount an attack that gained global support. Moreover, a "capability'' may be all Iran needs, in a world where a virtual bomb brings with it almost as much symbolic power as a real one.

But Mr. Obama is being vague for a reason. "He doesn't want to agree to a certain amount of uranium, or a certain deadline, that triggers a war," one of his aides said last month. "He needs room to resolve this peacefully."

- David E. Sanger

9:28 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Romney's Watch Party

- Jim Wilson

9:23 P.M. | Fact Check: Have Iran Sanctions Been Effective Under Obama?

The sanctions in place today are far greater than they were under President Bush. But they could be tighter still, even "crippling'' to use the phrase Mr. Romney likes.

On the question of Iran sanctions, Mr. Obama has got a lot of history on his side. Until Mr. Obama came to office, the United Nations sanctions on Iran were pretty ineffective - travel bans on scientists, some banks on sales of certain kinds of equipment. But they didn't go after the heart of the Iranian economy, oil sales. Mr. Obama did exactly that, step by step, making it hard for Iran to get access to dollars, to get international loans, and even to deliver oil. Even today, scores of loaded Iranian oil tankers are bobbing off the country's coast, with nowhere to go.

The result is that the sanctions in place today are far greater than they were under President Bush. But could they be tighter still, even "crippling'' to use the phrase Mr. Romney likes? (He borrowed it from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.) Certainly they could - but only if other countries agree. Because the U.S. has not had diplomatic relations or any significant trade with Iran for more than three decades, this is all a matter of persuading allies and other countries, and giving them an alternative to Iranian oil. Mr. Romney has not said how he would do that.

What Mr. Obama can't say is that while he ratcheted up the sanctions, he also expanded the covert program to sabotage Iran's nuclear centrifuges - a highly classified program called "Olympic Games.'' It introduced cyber weapons - a computer worm - to destabilize the machinery, buying a bit more time for sanctions to work - but not much.

- David E. Sanger

9:19 P.M. | Fact Check: Do Marines Guard Embassies?

Mr. Ryan was correct to say that Marine embassy guards serve at both embassies and consulates. But he was incorrect when he said that Marines were bodyguards for the ambassador in Paris or anywhere else. Marines guard the embassy, but do not usually provide full-time bodyguard protection for ambassadors. Their mission is to protect United States personnel, property and classified material.

An earlier version of this post, in assessing the accuracy of Mr. Ryan's opening statement, incorrectly said where Marine guards can serve. They serve at both United States embassies and consulates, as Mr. Ryan said, not only at embassies.

- Eric Schmitt

9:16 P.M. | Biden Comes Out Firing

Is Mr. Biden planning on being aggressive?

The vice president came out firing against Mr. Ryan, saying within moments that his rival's answer was "malarkey."

The subject - Libya and foreign policy - prompted Mr. Ryan to accuse the Obama administration of troubling failures regarding the attacks on the consulate and of broader failures in foreign affairs across the region.

Perhaps aware of the desire among Democrats for Mr. Biden to be aggressive, the statements prompted a quick reply.

"With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey," Mr. Biden said, "because not a single thing he said was accurate."

The vice president retorted that criticism about embassy security from Mr. Ryan didn't ring true.

"The congressman here cut embassy security $300 million below what we asked for," he said. And he quickly charged that Mr. Romney had politicized the attacks early on.

"Governor Romney, before we even knew that our ambassador was killed," made a statement, Mr. Biden said.

- Michael D. Shear

8:53 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Arriving (and Tweeting) Early

- James Hill

8:54 P.M. | Biden Telegraphs Strategy to Supporters

Wonder what Mr. Biden will do at the debate?

In an e-mail to supporters of President Obama's campaign that was sent out moments before the debate began, Mr. Biden lays out what he plans to do in his face-off with Mr. Ryan.

"I told Barack I have one mission tonight: tell the truth and stand up for what we believe in," Mr. Biden says. "Our side is always going to win when we do that."

That will come as a relief to Democrats, many of whom were frustrated - and even angry - at Mr. Obama for not standing up for his beliefs during the debate with Mitt Romney last week.

Now, the question is whether Mr. Biden will follow through with his promise and be aggressive in the debate. Part of that will depend on how Mr. Ryan handles the debate, and what he says.

In the e-mail, Mr. Biden says he's ready for anything.

"I can't predict if Paul Ryan will follow Mitt Romney's lead tonight, hiding and flat-out denying their unpopular ideas, or if he'll come prepared to have a real debate about where this country should go," Mr. Biden says. "Trust me, I'm ready for anything."

If that sounds good to Democrats receiving the e-mail, the campaign will be happy. Because the message ends with a familiar refrain:

"Please donate $5 or more today," it says.

- Michael D. Shear

8:38 P.M. | Biden and Ryan, Alike in Many Ways

The debate Thursday night will be a study in contrasts. A 69-year-old silver-haired politician versus an opponent 27 years his junior.

But hold on. Beyond their ages, the differences may not be that stark. Consider:

* Both men are creatures of Congress, having arrived in the nation's capital as very young men. Mr. Biden started as a senator in 1973, when he was 31. Mr. Ryan was 28 when he took office.

* Both men are Roman Catholic, though neither wears his religion on his sleeve.

* Both are from small-town America. Mr. Ryan frequently talks about his Norman Rockwell-like upbringing in Janesville, Wis. Mr. Biden, originally from Scranton, Pa., frequently takes Amtrak back to his Wilmington, Del., home.

* Both stress their working-class roots. Mr. Biden is a roll-up-your-sleeves populist who is at his best in front of blue-collar workers in the industrial Midwest. Mr. Ryan, while monkish, has working-class roots, having had his father die when he was young.

* Both men are policy wonks. Mr. Ryan has spent a career delving into the national budget. Mr. Biden was known as a foreign policy guru during his career in the Senate, and he has been the "sheriff" of the stimulus program, steeped in facts and figures.

- Michael D. Shear

8:29 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Searching for Romney 

- Max Whittaker

8:26 P.M. | Nationals' Win an Omen?

The Washington Nationals kept their first-in-almost-a-century playoff hopes alive on Thursday, winning Game 4 just before the beginning of the vice-presidential debate.

So it must be an omen for one of the vice-presidential candidates, right?

The question is: which one?

Neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Ryan chose to leave the campaign trail to take in one of the historic games in Washington. Fair weather fans, both.

So who gets the edge from the Washington win?

Maybe Mr. Biden. After all, as vice president he has already gotten to throw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game in 2009. (President Obama was out of the country on his first foreign trip.)

Or, maybe it's Mr. Ryan, who just Thursday was shown wearing a backward red baseball cap in a photo spread taken last year by Time Magazine. (He was posing for the Man of the Year feature. He was a runner-up.)

Either way, bet on both men agreeing on one thing: if Washington wins, they will both root for the team.

- Michael D. Shear

8:21 P.M. | Romney Calls to Wish Ryan Good Luck

Mitt Romney won't be there in person to root on his running mate. But at least he called.

Campaigning in North Carolina on Thursday, Mr. Romney placed a good-luck phone call to Mr. Ryan ahead of the congressman's first appearance on a national debate stage.

The call lasted just five minutes and included some good wishes from a few friends who happened to be with Mr. Romney in North Carolina.

"Speaker Boehner, Senator Portman and Governor Huckabee were present," according to a spokesman for the campaign. "Governor Romney handed the phone around so they could say hello and pass along their best wishes."

- Michael D. Shear

6:44 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Campus Rallies

- James Hill

6:30 P.M. | For Biden and Ryan, Substance and Style Hurdles

The debate on Thursday night between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan will be split into nine 10-minute segments, with Martha Raddatz, the moderator, choosing the topics for each.

Ms. Raddatz, the senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, has said she plans to alternate between domestic and foreign policy during the 90-minute debate. Her success at keeping to that schedule may depend on how feisty the two candidates are.

But if she sticks to her plan, the debate could become a rare, broad-ranging discussion that offers voters a good opportunity to judge the two men and their capabilities.

While it is hard to know exactly what topics might come up, here is a look at some of the possible lines of questioning and the challenges they could pose for the candidates, on both substance and style. Read more ...

- Michael D. Shear

6:28 P.M. | Six Things to Watch For in Biden-Ryan Debate

Over three days last week, Representative Paul D. Ryan reserved an indoor tennis court at a Virginia resort - not to practice his backhand, but to hold mock debates. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been at his own debate camp in Delaware this week, overseen by President Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod.

After Mitt Romney's momentum-shifting performance in the first presidential debate, the stakes were raised for the matchup between their chief surrogates.

The vice-presidential candidates have spent weeks going over their own and their opponent's talking points for Thursday night's debate in Danville, Ky. Here are six things to watch: Read more ...

- Trip Gabriel


LOAD-DATE: October 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



524 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


October 11, 2012 Thursday


Debating Points, Vice Presidential Edition


BYLINE: THE EDITORS


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 3187 words



HIGHLIGHT: Columnists and contributors weigh in with their thoughts on the vice presidential debate.


The editors of Campaign Stops asked columnists and contributors to weigh in with their thoughts on the vice presidential debate. 1:17 a.m. | Updated

8:20 p.m. Lynn Vavreck | The Undecided See Things Differently

It has been eight days since the first presidential debate; tonight Joe Biden and Paul Ryan take the stage. Seems like a good time to take stock of what has happened in the last week, particularly among the undecided voters we've been tracking since July and among the small set of people who have been switching between the candidates.

The data come from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project and are collected by YouGov. Everyone in the survey was interviewed in December of 2011 and again in 2012 at some point, which allows us to track how people are making up their minds throughout the campaign. C.C.A.P. has interviewed 1,000 people every week since January.

Looking at data collected this past week means we don't have a lot of cases of still undecided voters, and if this were all the data we had on undecideds, we would not give much weight to it. But these results taken in the context of 38 previous weeks of interviews (and 38,000 other cases) give us more confidence when interpreting the data, particularly if the patterns look similar.

After last week's debate, the share of undecided voters in the electorate held constant at slightly less than 3%. You may be wondering how that is possible, given the dramatic and perhaps unexpected performances by both candidates. The answer? More than half the previously undecided voters failed to tune in to the debate at all.

While only 21 percent of voters who have made up their minds skipped the debate, 54 percent of undecided voters did something else with their time. Coupled with their low level of general interest in news (44 percent never or hardly ever pay attention to the news, compared to 12 percent of decided voters who opt out of news), this means word of the candidates' performances probably never reached them directly.

Among the undecided voters who actually watched some or all of the debate, 19 percent thought Obama won, 35 percent thought Romney won, and 36 percent said they were unsure who won. The comparable figures for voters who had already made a vote choice are 12 percent Obama, 68 percent Romney, and 9 percent unsure - an unusually non-partisan result.

These results are worth sitting with for a minute: Among undecided voters who watched the debate, the conclusion that Romney outperformed Obama is only half as strong as it is among voters who had already made up their minds - regardless of who they have decided to vote for. More than any other result we've gotten with our survey, this one demonstrates the degree to which voters who are undecided are less well equipped in a political environment. It is as if they don't have the skills or vocabulary to navigate the political scene or to fully comprehend it. Because they are not that interested in politics and pay little attention to news, they have no structure in place to organize political information as it comes across the transom. Many are simply not sure who won the debate - they're not saying it was a tie. They are reporting that they cannot make an evaluation of any kind.

Before the debate, I wrote about the impressive amount of stability in people's vote choice - roughly 96 percent of voters stick with their initial choice. Last week's debate did nothing to shake this stability. Ninety-six percent of Romney voters and 98 percent of Obama voters are loyal to their initial choice. The debate also did very little to shift the dynamics among those whose decisions are fluid. Just as before the debate, Romney is losing roughly 3 percent of his initial voters to Obama while Obama loses only about 1 percent to Romney.

The debate also did very little to stop the flow of women away from Romney's campaign. In the week after the debate, 5 percent of women whose initial choice was Romney moved to Obama (relative to only 1 percent of men who make this transition and 1 percent of women leaving Obama for Romney), although it is worth noting again that the data for last week get thin when we cut them so finely.

One last thing: How are the undecided voters breaking after the first debate? Does the trend toward Obama, which began in mid-July, continue? It does. The still undecided voters continue to break for Obama by more than 2 to 1. Whether the wave that broke for Romney in most national polling after the debate will come later to our cohort, there is of course no way to know. But if last week's presidential debate didn't slow the slight movement of the remaining undecided voters to Obama, it's unlikely that the vice presidential debate will either.

Lynn Vavreck is an associate professor of political science and communication studies at U.C.L.A.

9:26 p.m. Molly Worthen | Which Catholic Vision?

Paul Ryan and Joe Biden may not say a word about God during their debate in Danville, Ky. But the contrast between the two men's notions of their shared Catholic faith will surface faster than you can say "blessed are the poor." Ryan's task is about as easy, as you may have heard, as leading a camel through the eye of a needle: he will have to defend the drastic cuts to social welfare in his budget plan while also refuting the charge - oftenleveled by his fellow Catholics - that his proposed cuts to Medicaid, early childhood education and other social programs will "crucify" poor Americans.

Liberals are hoping that Biden will extinguish the aura of Christian compassion that Romney conjured last week and expose the vice-presidential nominee as a servant of the rich who hides a copy of "Atlas Shrugged"within the covers of his Bible. After all, isn't a Roman Catholic libertarian a contradiction in terms?

The answer is no. Ryan's commitment to Catholic dogma and libertarian economics is not as eccentric or incoherent as his critics have claimed. He stands in an established tradition of Catholic conservatives who have reinterpreted the tenets of classical libertarian thought to create a hybrid doctrine suited for the defense of unbridled capitalism.

Catholic libertarians trace their genealogy back to the theologians Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as well as a smattering of more obscure nineteenth century thinkers like the French economist Frédéric Bastiat. But they came into their own during the 1950s as the modern conservative movement coalesced around an agenda of anti-communism and conservative morality.

Patrick Allitt, a historian at Emory University, has described how conservative Catholics like the priests Edward Keller and John Dinneen - not to mention the dean of American Catholic conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr.- extolled the freedoms of private enterprise and insisted that Rome opposed only the most radical theories of the free market. Catholic libertarians argue that the Christian family, not the individual, is the building block of society. God - certainly not government handouts - is the true source of human dignity. Original sin has condemned humanity to either suffer and starve or work for a living: "stealing" from the commonwealth is not a Christian option. As to the unholy alliance with Ayn Rand: some Catholic libertarians have argued that in her writings she asserts atheism but never bothers to argue the point, and so it is not hard for Christian disciples to turn a blind eye to her godlessness.

To claim the Vatican's pronouncements for their cause, the Catholic libertarians of the 1950s and 1960s ignored or reinterpreted some of Rome's strident critiques of capitalism in encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. In citing church teachings to defend modern capitalism, "they emphasized that the church is a historical institution, changing from one age to the next and unable to avoid the exigencies of historical transformation," Allitt writes. In other words, these conservatives took liberties much like the maneuvers that trouble them in progressive Catholics' efforts to revise the church's position on sexuality and birth control. They applied the tried and true rhetorical tactic of emphasizing the elements of scripture and tradition that best served their cause. It turns out that conservative and liberal Catholics have plenty in common after all-and not just that Jesuitical taste for argument on display in the debate.

Molly Worthen is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

21:59 p.m. John Sides | Watch Like a Political Scientist

Here are a few pieces of social science theory and data that might help us understand the dynamics of the debate.

First: Popular people are more persuasive - an idea that social scientists refer to as "source credibility." On this dimension, Biden and Ryan are essentially tied. Roughly equal proportions of people have favorable views of each. In Ryan's case, negative opinions of him have becomemore prevalent than positive opinions since he was picked as Romney's running mate. So neither starts the debate as the more popular figure.

Second: It's easier to play on people's existing opinions than try to convince them of something new. What's the lesson here? Talk about the issues on which you're already favored. For example, people tend to trust the Democratic Party and Obama to handle Medicare. The Republican line of attack on this issue-that Obama took money from Medicare to pay for Obamacare-may prove less persuasive. Better to talk about the deficit, for example, an issue on which voters tend to trust Romney rather than Obama.

Third: A lot of commentary during and after the debates is essentially a theater review-who "performed" better, who was more aggressive, or too aggressive, or whatever. We saw a lot of this after the first presidential debate. Unsurprisingly, then, voters' subsequent reactions had little to do with policy and much more to do with personality. For better or worse, the candidates' personalities and demeanor may count for more than their actual words.

John Sides is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University.

12:05 a.m. Lynn Vavreck | Without a Candidate, but Not Without Conviction

The vice-presidential debate ended with a question about how the candidates see their religion and abortion. In somber tones, both candidates discussed their relationship to their Catholicism and their political and moral views about when life begins and when abortion should be legal. Surprisingly, this is one issue on which undecided voters are not so different from those who have decided. Using C.C.A.P. data, let me show you how this plays out.

We asked 41,000 people for their views on abortion. Twenty-nine percent of people say abortion should be legal in all cases; 47 percent say abortion should be legal or illegal depending on specific circumstances; and 16 percent say abortion should be illegal in all cases. About 9 percent aren't sure how they feel. Differences across gender are minimal. If we limit the analysis to likely voters, the numbers are similar.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me ask: What about the undecided voters? Interestingly, the pattern we have seen previously - undecided voters being disengaged and unsure about their positions - does not emerge on abortion. Among likely voters who are currently undecided about their vote choice, 24 percent think abortion should always be legal, 45 percent think it should be legal under certain circumstances, and 18 percent think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances. And only 13 percent of undecided voters say they are "not sure" about their positions on abortion, compared to 9 percent of voters who have made up their minds.

Yes, that's twice as many undecideds not sure of their position (relative to those who have picked a candidate), but the six-point gap is smaller than it is on other issues and overall it is a low level of uncertainty.

The interesting question is why? As we continue to investigate the characteristics of undecided voters, this similarity is an important marker. Is it the fact that abortion is among the set of political issues people think of as more "social" than "economic"? If so, we'd expect to say the same pattern on positions of gay marriage. On this issue, 14 percent of decided voters are unsure of their positions and 32 percent of undecided voters are unsure. That is roughly double the rate, but at a much higher level overall.

Where we see the biggest gaps in uncertainty between the decided and the undecided, however, is on assessments related to the campaign, not on policies. While only 2 percent of decided voters could not rate Obama's performance as president, 24 percent of the undecided could not do this.

I take these pieces of evidence as one more piece of the puzzle about undecided voters - while they may have positions on issues, they don't react to the politics happening right now (like who won the debate or whether to approve of how the president is doing his job). This underscores the point that they are just not tuned in to current events - but that shouldn't be taken to mean that they don't have any convictions at all.

Lynn Vavreck is an associate professor of political science and communication studies at U.C.L.A.

12:16 a.m. Ross Douthat | Biden Stops the Bleeding

The biggest thing that tonight's vice presidential debate illustrated was how unusual last week's presidential debate really was - a clear victory for Romney, acknowledged as such by liberals as well as moderates, and the clear movement toward the Republican ticket that followed. There's a reason that pundits and political scientists tend to assume that debates usually don't move the polls that much - it's because they're usually much more like tonight's affair, which was a win for Joe Biden if you like his garrulous "I'm your Irish uncle, Paul, so let me interrupt you" style, a loss for Joe Biden if you tend to tune out when a national politician rolls his eyes and uses the phrase "malarkey," and probably something like a draw for the kind of voters who both sides actually want to influence.

Biden was tough, Ryan was sincere. Biden was often too aggressive, Ryan was sometimes too diffident. On the toughest questions, Biden filibustered while Ryan evaded. On the softballs, Biden got all gravelly and grandfatherly while Ryan looked doe-eyed and decent and choirboyish. If Biden won, it was by grabbing the debate by the throat and never letting go; if Ryan won, it was by keeping his cool and letting Biden overreach. If you watched MSNBC's post-debate coverage, you'd think Biden dominated; if you watched Fox's, you'd think Ryan won; if you watched CNN's, you'd think it was a muddle, a mixed bag, an interesting draw.

Overall, that's good news for the Democrats. Even if only liberals loved Biden, there's a lot to be said for firing up the base after the downer of a performance President Obama delivered last week. The veep's job was to stop the bleeding, to remind viewers of some of the things they disliked about Mitt Romney just a week ago, to give the media something to talk about besides Big Bird, Benghazi and the Romney-Ryan polling surge. He accomplished all of this even if he sometimes sounded like the Biden of Onion parodies, telling that kid Ryan to go scrub down his Trans Am. So it's enough, whatever the snap polls and focus groups say, to get the Democratic Party through till next Tuesday without having a total nervous breakdown - and after the week they've had, they'll take it.

Ross Douthat is a Times Op-Ed columnist.

1:17 a.m. Gary Gutting | For Democrats, a New Narrative

There were two promising elements in the makeup of tonight's debate. First, foreign affairs, much neglected in this campaign, was explicitly put on the table beforehand - with the subject to be moderated by an international reporter. Second, Paul Ryan's presence opened the door to a discussion of the major question of this election: Should we radically reduce the size and role of government and rely on the free market to regulate itself and to solve social problems?

The promise wasn't fulfilled. On foreign affairs, Ryan didn't know enough about overall strategic and diplomatic issues to get beyond slogans and ad hominems. He had nothing to add to the standard Romney "we'll-stand-tall" mantra. Biden was knowledgeable and sophisticated, but spent almost all his time responding to specific jibes and misrepresentations. He made us aware of his wide experience and insider status, but wasn't able to paint a coherent overall picture of the goals, methods and achievements of the Obama administration.

The talk on the economy was loaded with examples and numbers, but neither candidate provided the comprehensive context he would have needed to make a case for any policy conclusions. There was a lot of back and forth on the details of tax policy and health care. But Ryan made no defense (or even mention) of the radically restricted role he favors for government, and Biden made no case for the effectiveness of Obama's Keynesian stimulus. Biden was most impressive in showing how Ryan simply refused to say what deductions or loopholes his tax plan would eliminate. Ryan's main achievement was to thoroughly muddle the question of what would happen to Medicare under his plan.

Politically, the debate was more fruitful. Ryan made it through his first big national test with a friendly but firm manner and an air of confidence and competence. He took a major step toward establishing that he could play in the Big Leagues. Biden struck an effective balance between confrontation and affability, doing what even many Democrats thought Obama should have done in the first debate.

My own view - one that was not heard much last week - is that Obama's performance was much better than he got credit for. He was strong on facts and argument and stood up to Romney as well as Biden stood up to Ryan. But on the level of personality and style, Obama's reflective coolness was too readily swamped by Romney's salesman-like persistence and self-assurance. If Biden accomplished anything, it was to show that his persona would have worked better, as it did tonight.

But there was also a striking difference in how the Democrats themselves responded to Obama's and Biden's performances. Debates are often won or lost in the first hour of post-game analysis. Democrats gave up on Obama immediately and let their opponents construct the narrative of a weak president run over by forceful challenger. They could have, for example, put forward a counter-narrative of a calm and reflective president, quietly demolishing the flagrant misrepresentations of an arrogant opponent. You win a debate by convincing people that you have won it. Last week the Democrats didn't try. Tonight they did.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.



LOAD-DATE: October 15, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



525 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 11, 2012 Thursday
FA CHASE EDITION


BATTLE FOR THE SENATE;
Control of chamber rests in a few states


BYLINE: Susan Davis, USA TODAY,


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A


LENGTH: 2006 words


Surrounded by firefighters supporting her campaign, Elizabeth Warren stood on a street corner in South Boston and hit at Republican Sen. Scott Brown where it hurts. His pickup truck.

"It's not about what truck you drive," the Democratic candidate said, reiterating a popular sound bite dismissing Brown's storied truck. The vehicle has featured prominently in Brown's two Senate campaigns as a symbol of his ability to relate to the state's working-class voters who helped elect him. "I'm in this race because I believe in working families," she said.

Brown lobbed his own offensive at Warren a day earlier outside of Boston's South Station, casting her as a "hired gun" for corporate interests, following media reports about her previous legal work in the 1990s, when she assisted a steel company in a fight over making payments into a health care fund for retired coal miners. "That's an issue of honesty and character," Brown said, trying to undermine Warren's image as a consumer advocate.

The brawling, personal Massachusetts race has intensified in the closing weeks of a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.

Warren and Brown are competing intensely for working-class voters in very blue Massachusetts who helped Brown win a surprise 2010 special election to replace the late Democratic icon, Ted Kennedy. Now, Warren needs them back if she is to win the seat next month.

"Certainly we can relate more to Scott with the pickup truck and the jeans and the jacket and the beer at the Erie Pub, but this isn't about that," said Bob McCarthy, 67, a retired Watertown Fire Department captain who supports Warren. "This isn't about who's going to be your best friend, this is about who's going to be supporting you down in D.C."

Democrats, who control the chamber 53-47, initially faced tough odds for maintaining control because they are defending 23 of the 33 seats up for re-election. But a combination of competitive candidates, presidential politics and Republican missteps is giving the party a narrow edge in the closing weeks of the races.

Brown has proven to be a resilient GOP candidate in a reliably Democratic state, but Warren has methodically eroded his double-digit advantage and is now tied or beating him in opinion polls. The race remains too close to be predictive, but state observers and national strategists put a thumb on the scale for Warren because of the difficulty Brown faces in having enough cross-ballot appeal to blunt President Obama's coattail effect. Obama carried the state by 26 points in 2008 and current polls give him a similar advantage against Mitt Romney.

"I'm worried for him with it being tied or her slightly ahead going into October in a presidential year. The numbers are just really tough," said Rob Gray, a veteran Massachusetts GOP strategist who is not affiliated with the Brown campaign.

In a signal of what's to come in the homestretch, Brown's campaign recently launched its first negative ad, highlighting a controversy over Warren describing herself as Native American on employment forms during her academic career at Harvard University. Warren responded in an ad of her own where she maintains her family has Native American ancestry. "As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage," Warren says in the ad, "Let me be clear. I never asked for or never got any benefit because of my heritage."

The Obama effect

Like Warren in Massachusetts, Democrats in Virginia and Wisconsin are narrowly breaking away from Republicans in recent polls, aided by a positive Obama effect in the three states.

In Virginia, former governor Tim Kaine has led former GOP senator George Allen in every poll taken since mid-September by one to eight points. Virginia is a presidential battleground where Obama had been leading Romney until the first presidential debate. Romney has since tightened the race, but Kaine has maintained his advantage.

While Republicans had hoped the addition of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to the GOP ticket would make his home state more competitive, Obama maintains an advantage there, where Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin has taken the lead over former governor Tommy Thompson, who was bruised in a combative GOP primary.

Republicans, who are trying to hold onto their seat in Massachusetts, see Virginia and Wisconsin as pickup opportunities because both seats are held by Democrats. If all three are in Democratic hands in November, the chances wither for a GOP takeover.

Democrats have also been able to make surprisingly competitive bids in North Dakota and Indiana. In North Dakota, former state attorney general Heidi Heitkamp is within single digits of GOP Rep. Rick Berg in a state that has been largely inoculated by the economic downturn and unemployment is just 3%.

"Really no one gave us a chance in North Dakota until Heidi got in that race," said Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Senate Democrats' campaign operation. "It seems to be really resistant to what's happening in the presidential election."

Polls show Obama far behind in North Dakota. Indiana looks like a red state this year, but Democrats are hoping conservative Richard Mourdock, who ousted six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana's GOP primary in May, will prove too far right for the state. Missteps by Mourdock and an aggressive ad strategy by Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly has upgraded this race by non-partisan election forecasters, including the Cook Political Report, to a tossup.

Republicans once had high hopes for their candidates in Hawaii and New Mexico, but they have backed away from both in recent weeks, including the party withdrawing an ad buy in New Mexico.

Efforts to pick up Democratic seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida likewise seem to be falling short, as Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Bill Nelson of Florida are now favored for re-election in polls and by election forecasters.

Democrats can lose no more than three seats and hold the majority if Obama wins re-election and the vice president is the tie-breaker in a 50-50 Senate. Larry Sabato, a veteran political analyst at the University of Virginia, estimates a 49-45 Democratic edge, with six races in real contention: Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

That means Republicans will have to run the table in all six to win outright, or win five and hope that Romney is elected so his vice president can break a tie.

GOP silver linings

Republicans are not abandoning hopes of a takeover. "No one on our side ever thought that winning back the majority would be easy and certainly there have been unexpected developments for both parties this cycle, but with four weeks to go Republicans are well positioned in a range of key races across the country. We believe Republicans will make gains and certainly a path to the majority still exists," said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

A shifting national landscape has put at least one previously unexpected pickup of a Democratic seat within striking distance.

Connecticut Republican Linda McMahon, best known as the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has run an aggressive, well-funded bid against Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy, who has not yet recovered from a steady stream of attacks over two past lawsuits against him for nonpayment of rent on an apartment in 2003 and a home foreclosure in 2007. The matters were settled quickly when Murphy paid his debts, but the political fallout has lingered.

McMahon, who lost in 2010 to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, has also done a better job selling her personal story about rising out of bankruptcy to become a successful businesswoman and highlighting her more moderate views in a Democratic state -- she supports abortion rights, for instance.

"McMahon has run a great race," said Jennifer Duffy, a non-partisan analyst with the Cook Political Report. Duffy said McMahon has excelled at recasting herself to voters, while painting a negative portrait of Murphy. "People thought she was just a rich lady who invented wrestling."

The tightening opportunities for the GOP has forced Republicans to take a second look at the unusual Maine Senate race, where former governor Angus King, running as an independent, has taken a hit in the polls despite being the early favorite. Congressional Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expect him to caucus with Democrats if he wins.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, after initially walking away from the state, has gone in with weeks of statewide negative ads. Its strategy is to drive down King in hopes of driving his supporters to little-known Democrat Cynthia Dill. If Dill can peel away enough of the vote, it could give Republican Charles Summers a narrow victory in a three-way race. "This is a small needle, and they know it, but I can't blame them for trying," Duffy said.

Republicans are also holding their own in two of the tightest races: Montana and Nevada. Polling averages compiled by the political website RealClearPolitics give incumbent GOP Sen. Dean Heller a 1.6-point lead over Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who has been hurt by an ongoing ethics probe into allegations she used her office to boost her husband's medical practice.

Montana is a state where Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg is hoping the Romney coattail effect will give him the boost he needs to oust Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. The race's importance has grown as Republican hopes have faded elsewhere.

The biggest blow to Republicans came when the Missouri Senate campaign of Republican Rep. Todd Akin nose-dived in August after he made controversial comments about "legitimate rape." Party leaders and outside groups withdrew from the race and called on Akin to quit.

Akin's determination to stay in may prompt the GOP to get back in to the race in the closing weeks if Akin can keep the race competitive. National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Rob Jesmer released a carefully worded statement in late September that suggested the party could re-engage.

"As with every Republican Senate candidate, we hope Todd Akin wins in November and we will continue to monitor this race closely in the days ahead," he said.

Back in Boston

Each race has its own unique contours, and in Massachusetts the pitch to working-class voters is at its core. Brown won his election upset by making overtures to working-class voters and stressing his common background. Warren has become a celebrated liberal activist for her work to advance consumers' rights and her harsh takedown of Wall Street since the financial collapse.

Warren, 63, has never held political office but the Oklahoma-born candidate has ties to the state through nearly 20 years teaching at Harvard University. Her involvement in national politics escalated during the financial crisis when she was tapped by Congress to serve on an oversight panel to monitor bank bailouts. She was also a pivotal advocate for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010, but her nomination to run the new agency was opposed by financial institutions and blocked by Senate Republicans .

Brown has a high profile for a freshman senator because of his historic 2010 upset in the race for Kennedy's seat. His likeability and centrist voting record have made Brown a tough Republican to beat in a heavily Democratic state. Brown is the third most liberal Republican senator, according to annual vote ratings compiled by National Journal, which place him square in the center of the U.S. Senate.

Poor and blue-collar workers make up just over a quarter of the state. Romney's candidacy has punctuated the divide, as Democrats repeatedly try to tie Brown to the former wealthy governor, who is unpopular. For many voters, it's working.

"Scott Brown, he's like Mitt Romney localized on steroids," said Joseph Flynn, 27, a Charlestown native who works two jobs in construction and security.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC, Color, Julie Snider, USA TODAY (maps)


DOCUMENT-TYPE: COVER STORY


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



526 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 11, 2012 Thursday 11:01 PM EST


Obama has 3-1 advantage among Latino voters, poll shows


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 595 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Romney takes seven-point lead in new Florida poll

Wonk|Fix: Chris Cillizza and Ezra Klein preview the VP debate

Why Ohio is the most important state in the country

In a super PAC world, Democrats win using small donors

Democrats ahead or tied in four of five battleground Senate races, polls show

The vice presidential debate in 5 charts

Arizona's Jeff Flake hits rival Richard Carmona with ad alleging issues with anger, women

Polls show little change in swing states, despite Romney's momentum

5 things to watch for in the vice presidential debate

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* At a campaign event in Miami, President Obama continued his effort to portray Mitt Romney as a political shapeshifter, saying: "He's trying to go through an extreme makeover: After running for more than a year in which he called himself severely conservative, Mitt Romney is trying to convince you that he was severely kidding." Romney called himself a "severely conservative" governor once at CPAC earlier this year. 

* Romney and the Rev. Billy Graham met for 30 minutes in North Carolina on Thursday. As the meeting was wrapping up, campaign aides said Graham told Romney, "I'll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that." 

* Obama has a 3-1 advantage among Hispanic voters, a new national poll from the Pew Hispanic Center shows. Obama leads Romney 69 percent to 21 percent, according to the survey. Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote in 2008, according to exit poll data. 

* Republican Tom Smith is running about even with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), according to an internal poll conducted for Smith's campaign. Casey is at 46 percent while Smith is at 44 percent in the survey, which was conducted Sunday and Monday by John McLaughlin. Meanwhile, Casey released a new 60-second TV ad with a woman whose son was electrocuted in a shower while serving in Iraq. The woman says she reached out to Casey, who helped spur defense contractors to fix faulty wiring. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* Here's how the Obama campaign is framing tonight's debate between Vice President Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): Biden will tell the truth, and Ryan likely won't. "Joe Biden, as he always does, will speak the truth," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters Thursday. Messina added that Ryan, "from his fact-free convention speech to his exaggerated marathon time ... isn't afraid to stretch the truth." 

* Romney called a Philadelphia high school student who says she was mocked by her teacher for wearing a Romney t-shirt. The 16-year-old girl wasn't home at the time, but her mom took the call and relayed Romney's message, which was to thank her for standing up for herself. 

* A new Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee TV ad slams Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) for voting "against bulletproof vests for local police, against funding for child abuse prevention," among other things.  

* The Republican Governors Association has released a new TV ad that says former Washington congressman Jay Inslee (D) "keeps making bad decisions that hurt our small businesses."

THE FIX MIX: 

Can't we be friends?

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



527 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 11, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


All that cash, all those underdogs


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A section; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 805 words


You'd think that Jim Messina would have been in a pretty good mood last Saturday, when President Obama's reelection campaign reported that it was close to raising $1 billion for 2012.

But before long, Messina, Obama's campaign manager, was sounding the alarm bell.

"Outside groups are flooding the airwaves with negative ads trashing President Obama and everything we've accomplished together in the past four years," Messina wrote in an e-mail announcing the impressive fundraising haul. "Over the course of the next week alone, these groups are planning an unprecedented negative ad blitz in battleground states across the country."

In the race for campaign cash, it seems, everyone is an underdog.

Both Obama and his challenger, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, are certain to surpass the $1 billion mark in resources between their campaigns, parties and outside allies. The benchmark will easily make Obama and Romney the two most formidable political fundraisers in U.S. history.

Yet both sides routinely cast themselves as paupers in danger of being outspent by a monied opponent. In fundraising pleas, supporters are told that another $5 or $13 or $25 is all that stands between the candidate and victory in November.

"One billion dollars," began a fundraising e-mail on Monday from Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades. "For the first time in history, a political campaign will hit the billion-dollar mark.. . . Liberals will not give up their power easily, so it's imperative that we all come together to stand up against them."

In reality, neither side is hurting much for money. Even if the two candidates ceased all fundraising today, 2012 would rank as the most expensive presidential general election ever, largely because both have opted out of a public financing system used by previous candidates.

The Obama campaign says it raised $181 million in September with the Democratic National Committee, marking the best fundraising month of the cycle. The total is just shy of the record $193 million collected by Obama and the DNC in September 2008.

The bounty puts Obama and the Democrats on a path to exceed $1 billion raised for 2012, which is more than they raised in 2008. The main difference this time is that Obama has not raised as much cash directly for his own campaign as he did in 2008, relying more on larger checks collected by the DNC.

Romney has yet to release his September fundraising total, but he had raised about $640 million with the Republican National Committee through the end of August, disclosure records show. Although he has brought in less overall than Obama and the Democrats, Romney raised more in May, June and July and nearly matched Obama in August.

But Romney's key advantage comes from outside his campaign, where a well-funded network of conservative groups has been able to collect unlimited checks to pay for a barrage of television ads. The combination has put Romney's side at rough parity with Obama and his allies in spending so far, according to disclosure records and advertising estimates.

Yet the hard sell continues. Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, told supporters this week that "the billion-dollar Obama juggernaut won't go down without a fight." Vice President Biden, meanwhile, warned that the GOP was in the midst of "a $23 million week-long ad blitz attacking Barack in 10 battleground states."

"Our organizing depends on budgets and those budgets depend on you, right now," Biden continued in a fundraising e-mail. "This campaign needs to make critical decisions this week, and with just 28 days to go, there's no 'I'll get to it later.' If you've been waiting for the right moment to chip in, now is the time."

Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, said that "saying you're threatened is a proven way to raise money" in politics. He noted that by approaching $1 billion, each of the presidential candidates will spend about as much as all major U.S. Senate candidates spent in 2008 and 2010 combined.

"It strikes me that President Obama and Governor Romney each will spend more than enough to be heard," Malbin said. "I do not know if there is ever a point of complete saturation, but we're clearly in the land of diminishing returns."

eggend@washpost.com

For more Influence Industry columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



528 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 11, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Facing off on a tiny playing field


BYLINE: Amy Gardner


SECTION: A section; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1425 words


Despite an apparent poll bounce for Mitt Romney in recent weeks, the fundamental dynamic of the presidential electoral map appears to be locked in, with the two campaigns focused on the same nine states that have dominated for most of the year, according to strategists on both sides.

The Republican nominee has enjoyed some momentum after his winning performance in the first presidential debate, which has seemingly put once-written-off states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan back in the mix, according to polls out this week. But the Romney campaign appears to be resisting pressure from supporters to broaden the fight and, at least for now, is not expanding its path to the 270 electoral college votes needed to capture the White House.

That leaves Romney with a very narrow road to victory, one that probably requires him to win large battlegrounds such as Florida, Virginia and Colorado along with Ohio, a swing state so critical that he is making four stops there in two days this week.

Romney's advisers acknowledge that he still has work to do in Ohio. Just days ago, Romney moved five campaign workers to that state from Pennsylvania, one aide said. And though the Ohio race has become more competitive - with Romney drawing within five percentage points of President Obama, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday - the president still holds a lead in the state, without which no Republican has ever won the presidency.

If the electoral map for Romney remains relatively fixed, the same appears true for Obama, whose advisers say they are committed to the handful of states they targeted months ago. When the president seemed to hold a commanding lead across numerous states early last week, his strategists said they would not make a concerted play for some that appeared almost within reach, such as Arizona. Now that the race is closer, they say they are fortifying their borders, which allow him several options for getting to 270 electoral votes.

"What you've seen is a stable map for a very long time," Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, said in an interview Tuesday.

The result is the smallest, most rigid playing field in recent history - one that excludes 41 states.

Locked-up states

Both campaigns agree that 36 states are not competitive this year, with 22 of them expected to vote for Romney and 14 for Obama. But the Obama states are more populous; when tallied according to electoral votes, these three dozen states give Obama 197 votes and Romney 169.

Obama and Romney have spent the bulk of their money and attention this year in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Five more states are not being heavily contested, though the campaigns do not agree that the outcomes there are certain.

No state illustrates the narrowness of the playing field more than Ohio, where the candidates are spending more time than anywhere else. Even with Romney's uptick in national polls, victory remains virtually impossible for him without Ohio; he could win Florida, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada and still lose without the Buckeye State. If anything, his bounce has pushed him to redouble his efforts within the existing electoral map rather than think about expanding it.

For Obama, there is no move to expand the map because he doesn't need any more states to win. His advisers also say there is no need, at least yet, to rejigger resources because they have been investing heavily all along. Ohio is a case in point: Obama has a paid staff of 700 on the ground there, and his advertising spending, though even with Romney's now, dwarfed that of his rival for much of the year.

"Ohio is a couple of things: It's winnable, it's expensive, and it's volatile," said Liz Brown, daughter of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and the head of the state Democratic Party's coordinated campaign, a joint get-out-the-vote effort of the party and the candidates. "The last few weeks we've gone from 'Obama's won Ohio' to 'Oh cr--, he gave a less-than-optimistic debate performance.' This up and down of the narrative around Ohio doesn't change those three facts. The strategy from the beginning has been a larger investment per capita in Ohio."

Certainly, Romney could still be tempted to make a more aggressive play for Pennsylvania or Michigan, states that have long been labeled battlegrounds - but that have tilted heavily toward Democrats in recent elections. And Obama, when he held a solid lead in virtually every swing state, was encouraged by some fellow Democrats to extend his ads into Arizona, Missouri and Indiana, three Republican-leaning states.

Romney political director Rich Beeson said he doesn't rule out an expansion of the map in the campaign's final month. He cautioned that the movement of staff members from Pennsylvania to Ohio does not signal a concession in Pennsylvania but rather reflects the importance of early voting in Ohio. The staffers will probably return to Pennsylvania before Nov. 6, he said. Beeson also noted that this year, compared with past years, more states are closely contested late in the cycle.

"There are a lot of states out there moving," he said.

But unlike in some past election cycles - such as in 2000, when George W. Bush swooped into long-shot New Jersey just before ballots were cast - the Obama and Romney campaigns are showing unusual restraint by sticking to their long-standing electoral strategies.

"A lot of it's just got to do with the polarization of the country," said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist helping the Romney campaign. "The states that are purple are relatively few in number. The states that are red and blue are relatively large in number. Presidential contests are directly correlated to where you have split population centers that produce mixed results."

Shrinking the field

A few factors explain why this year's playing field is so small and unchanging.

First, demographic shifts have taken past battlegrounds off the map. New Mexico, for instance, was in the red column just eight years ago, when Bush won the state and his second term. Since then, both sides have seen it as irreversibly blue.

Similarly, Indiana, which Obama won four years ago, was deemed out of reach for him early on because its conservative electorate does not favor his policies. Even TV ads that have wafted into northeastern Indiana from several Ohio markets haven't moved the needle. The same is true for northwest Arizona, where households have been inundated with TV ads from Las Vegas stations but polling numbers haven't changed.

"There's no evidence of spillover," said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who recently helped conduct the Howey/DePauw poll in Indiana. "Obama is losing by big margins."

Another factor is the rise in data about where voters are, who they are and whether they can be persuaded to vote a certain way. Through commercial databases, polling, phone-banking and door-knocking, campaigns know more about voters than ever before. They know who is persuadable and who is not. They know how many contacts it takes to reach a voter, how much that would cost and whether that cost is worthwhile, given how liberal or conservative - how winnable - a state is.

Some states move in and out of the competitive zone. At the outset of this election cycle, advisers from both parties thought Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania or Michigan might drift into play. Additionally, outside groups have aired ads in a wider field that has included Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan. But those lists have shrunk recently. A confluence of circumstances - including growing Latino populations and the popularity of Obama's auto-industry bailout - have given this year's playing field its uniquely narrow borders.

It's possible that the field could shrink further, but only if Obama pulls out of states he decides he can't win or doesn't need. North Carolina is the best example of this: It has been rated by most pollsters as a likely win for Romney, but the president has invested heavily there, perhaps only to force Romney to do the same. If that was the strategy, it worked; Republicans have spent tens of millions on the airwaves in North Carolina to match Obama's investment, and Romney is scheduled to travel there for a campaign appearance Thursday.

Romney has few such options. He needs to win more swing states overall, meaning he can't afford to pull out of any of them without looking like he's conceding the race.

gardnera@washpost.com

Dan Keating contributed to this story.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



529 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 11, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Obama vows tougher approach in next debate


BYLINE: Scott Wilson;David Nakamura


SECTION: A section; Pg. A08


LENGTH: 1310 words


President Obama is promising a more aggressive approach in his debate next week with Mitt Romney and is offering some clues about how he intends to blunt his Republican rival's momentum and reassure jittery Democratic supporters.

The president and his proxies have rolled out a sharper-edged message in the week since his lackluster first debate, hammering Romney over his changing positions on such central issues as tax cuts, health care and education.

The Democratic argument has been that Romney lied about his plans on the stage last week in front of 68 million television viewers in a way that disguises their potential impact on middle-class families.

In recent campaign advertising and in the president's post-debate stump speeches, the outlines of Obama's new approach are visible - and appear to reflect the lines of argument and rebuttal that he failed to make onstage in Denver. The strategy may become even more visible Thursday night, when Vice President Biden debates Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan in their only face-to-face encounter.

Obama has tested some catchy phrases in recent days. "That's not leadership - that's salesmanship," the president said of Romney at a Tuesday campaign rally at Ohio State University, employing the kind of one-liner that his advisers had dismissed as un-presidential before the first debate.

In a radio interview Wednesday, Obama said he had been "too polite" onstage last week with Romney. It was the latest of several defenses the campaign has offered up since his performance in Denver; earlier, aides had said Obama was simply too stunned by Romney's deceit to reply adequately.

Either way, Obama vowed to respond more energetically at their next matchup, at Hofstra University in New York on Tuesday.

"It's fair to say we will see a little more activity at the next" debate, Obama said on the "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," a nationally syndicated radio program. "We have four weeks left in this election, and we're going to take it to them and make sure everyone understands what's at stake."

Romney advisers have called Obama's questions about their candidate's honesty evidence that the president is unable to defend his record on job creation, health care and the management of the deficit. Romney has sought to press his post-debate advantage in recent days, even taking on Obama's foreign policy record, once seen as the incumbent's strength.

In the radio interview, Obama said he expected the race to turn back his way, beginning Thursday night with the vice-presidential debate. He also dismissed the Democratic angst that has followed his performance in Denver as the same misplaced doubts that dogged his campaign four years ago.

"By next week, I think a lot of the hand-wringing will be complete because we're going to go ahead and win this thing," Obama said. "You were around in 2008. How many times were people saying we weren't going to win?"

In a separate interview with ABC News's Diane Sawyer on Wednesday, Obama said of the debate: "Governor Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time I've had a bad night."

But he denied the debate might have handed the election to his rival. "What's important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven't changed," Obama said, according to a transcript released by ABC News. "You know, Governor Romney went to a lot of trouble to try to hide what his positions are."

Polls tighten

Since the debate, the Democratic mood has darkened, with a marked tightening in national and swing-state opinion polls that has thrown the election into question with less than a month to go.

Worried supporters are hoping Biden, an experienced debater, delivers a well-argued defense of the administration's record and a pointed critique of the Romney-Ryan candidacy that Obama largely failed to do last week.

"They had a strategy last time - a failed strategy," former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (D) said of the Obama campaign, whose advisers counseled the president not to be overly aggressive, for fear of looking petty onstage. "They changed strategies. But if I were advising them, I'd say don't just turn this into a negative campaign. Talk about what you've done and your plans for the future."

Obama will travel to Williamsburg, Va., on Saturday for three days of preparation with the same team that advised him last week, including Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has played Romney in mock debates with Obama; White House adviser David Plouffe; campaign adviser David Axelrod; and communications consultants Anita Dunn and Ron Klain.

Campaign officials have been largely silent on specifics of the preparation and Obama's intent. But since the debate in Denver, the president and his proxies have offered a road map for what new to expect.

On Wednesday, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards blasted Romney for seeming to back away from his anti-abortion position by suggesting in an interview with the Des Moines Register that he would not actively pursue legislation that would outlaw abortions.

The conference call underscored the Obama campaign's concern over its lost edge with female voters, a once-sizable advantage that has largely evaporated since the Denver debate.

"With 26 days to go, he's trying to soften his image," Cutter said, referring to Romney. "We're going to hold him accountable."

Swing-state blitz

During visits to four swing states, including two visits to Ohio, after the last debate, Obama has sought to make the case that Romney misled viewers last week.

In addition, the Obama campaign and an auxiliary super PAC have reinforced the message with specific critiques of Romney's debate statements in those states, plus several others now more in play after Obama's performance in Denver.

Three days after the debate, the Obama campaign began broadcasting an ad called "Dishonest" in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. The spot focuses on Romney's debate contention that he does not have a $5 trillion tax-cut plan, something Obama has said he has been campaigning on for months.

"If we can't trust him to be honest now, how can we trust him in the White House?" the ad asks.

On Tuesday, the campaign released another ad in swing states that accuses Romney of repeatedly raising nursing-home fees during his tenure as Massachusetts governor and threatening Medicaid, an important way middle-class families pay to place elderly parents in nursing homes.

"We have a president who won't let that happen," the ad notes.

Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Obama's reelection, has echoed the danger-to-the-middle-class message as part of a $30 million advertising blitz in the final month before the election.

In an ad running in a half-dozen swing states, the group argues that Romney intends to cut public school funding to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, ending with the line: "If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses."

Neera Tanden, president for the liberal Center for American Progress, acknowledged that the race is tightening. But she said Obama has plenty of time to regain control if he is more willing to confront Romney directly about his changing positions.

"The president has an obligation not to be aggressive, but to say with a smile and point out to the American people that when a candidate says 'A' six months ago and 'Z' a month before the election, is he going to say 'M' when he's president?" Tanden said.

For his part, Obama is projecting an air of confidence, making reference during the radio interview to an Internet meme featuring his photo with a superimposed slogan.

"As some of those e-mails going around with my picture on it say, 'I got this,'[#x200a]" the president said.

wilsons@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



530 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 11, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Romney's Syria plan: Easier said than done


BYLINE: Walter Pincus


SECTION: A section; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 941 words


Does Mitt Romney understand the implications of his campaign pledge to "ensure" that Syrian opposition members "who share our values" will "obtain the arms they need" to defeat President Bashir al-Assad's "tanks, helicopters and fighter jets"?

It's quite easy for a speechwriter in Boston or Washington to put such promises on paper, and even easier for the candidate to make them in front of American flags to an audience of Virginia Military Institute cadets as he did on Monday.

Does he plan to add to the task of CIA and military intelligence officers who already are trying to identify the right Syrians to receive intelligence and communications equipment along with humanitarian assistance? Sorting out which among almost 100 groups deserve even this non-military help is one of the reasons the Obama administration is holding back from doing even more.

What other test does Romney have in mind to make sure various militia leaders with forces of varied sectarian, religious, criminal and even jihadist backgrounds "share our values"? Does he plan to link U.S. military and other material assistance to militia leaders to pledges to respect responsibilities that he listed, such as the rights of "all their citizens including women and minorities . . . space for civil society, a free media, political parties and an independent judiciary"?

Let's examine the harder tasks for the CIA and Pentagon that would emerge if they were tasked with carrying out the rest of Romney's pledge.

Start with his promise to "defeat Assad's . . . fighter jets." Setting up a no-fly zone, which Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have been recommending for months, is the only practical way to accomplish Romney's proposal.

It requires attacks on a variety of targets, including Syrian air bases and aircraft, ammunition and fuel storage facilities, radar and command-and-control centers and surface-to-air missile batteries. The initial March 2011 attack on Libya to establish a no-fly zone required 112 Tomahawk missiles fired at 20 targets, followed by continuous air missions - and Moammar Gaddafi's air defenses were far less capable than Assad's.

The Pentagon has already drawn up contingency plans for such a step. On March 7, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that establishing a no-fly zone would have to be led by U.S. forces and take "an extended period of time and a great number of aircraft."

Dempsey noted: "They [Syria] have approximately five times more sophisticated air defense systems than existed in Libya. . . . All of their air defenses are arrayed on their western border, which is their population center."

Did Romney or his speechwriters read that testimony? Did they understand, as Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta explained to the senators seven months ago, that suppressing Syria's air defenses would involve heavy civilian casualties, since Assad's forces were strategically deployed in and around cities?

Perhaps Romney did some reading since Monday. On Wednesday, at a campaign event in Mount Vernon, Ohio, he repeated that he would identify "reasonable and responsible" Syrian dissidents and "provide funding and weapons to them." But he said that "the active role" he planned "doesn't mean sending in troops or dropping bombs."

What happened to making sure the dissidents "share our values"? And how does Romney plan to defeat Assad's fighter jets without dropping bombs?

The two other elements of his Monday pledge involve arming the Syrian opposition to deal with Assad's helicopters and tanks. They are less dramatic, but worth reviewing.

The most probable weapon to deal with Syria's armed helicopters are shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Assad's forces reportedly have large stocks of an old Russian version called the SA-7, and there are reports the rebel forces have already been using them, probably after taking them during raids on Assad's ammunition dumps.

Gaddafi's military had stocks of these weapons, and U.S. and NATO intelligence have been trying to track down about 10,000 of the Libyan weapons that vanished when its military collapsed. As one former senior intelligence official said recently, this is one type of weapon that the U.S. will not distribute to any group in the Middle East, given its threat to commercial aircraft anywhere in the world.

As for tanks, Romney may be a bit behind the times. For almost a year, Syrian rebels have been using improvised explosive devices, the IEDs that have been the main cause of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. In Syria, they have been used against Assad's battle tanks, to attack convoys, and even to blow up buildings. U.S. intelligence sees them as one sign that jihadists have entered the fight on the rebel side.

Al-Jazeera has reported that Syrian rebels have set up a buffer zone along the Turkish border. And reports have circulated since July about a clandestine facility near the southern Turkish city of Adana that is being used as a "nerve center" for Turkey and other nations aiding the rebels. Sixty miles from the Syrian border, the secret facility is near Incirlik Air Base, which is a communications and transportation hub as well as a site for NATO and U.S. military exercises. Some 1,500 U.S. personnel are there.

Romney said the U.S. should be working "vigorously with our international partners to support" the Syrian opposition "rather than sitting on the sidelines." Many of those Americans at Incirlik already may be doing much more than sitting on the sidelines when it comes to Syria.

pincusw@washpost.com

For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



531 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 11, 2012 Thursday 6:11 PM EST


5 things to watch for in the vice presidential debate


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1339 words


The "Thrill in the 'Ville" - aka the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan - gets underway this evening in Danville, Ky.

The debate you've already seen: We take a mashup look back on what Joe Biden and Paul Ryan have already said about their campaign platforms and running mates. For more on their debating styles, watch these debate prep lessons from the Post's Karen Tumulty.

But, what's a political junkie to do between now and the 9 p.m. eastern start time?  Why, check out the Fix's viewer's guide to the proceedings, of course.

Five of our thoughts on what to watch for are below. Have your own keys to tonight's debate? The comments section is open for business.

* The expectations game: Unlike last week's debate, where large majorities of people thought beforehand that President Obama would wipe the floor with Mitt Romney (that SO didn't happen), the expectations are much less tilted toward one candidate for this debate. In a Pew poll released Wednesday, 40 percent of registered voters said they thought Ryan would do a better job while 34 percent thought Biden would. One thing that could work in Ryan's favor, however, is that he is viewed more favorably than Biden in the Pew survey - meaning that he could get some benefit-of-the-doubt points from people watching at home.

* Stakes is High : Regular Fix readers - that's everyone, right? - know that we have long  been skeptical of the effect that vice presidential picks have on voters' decision-making process. It would follow logically then that a debate between the two vice presidential candidates would be almost entirely inconsequential - and historical Gallup polling shows just that. But context matters in politics, and the context of this debate is of a re-energized Republican party and a panicky Democratic party following Romney's debate victory last week. If Ryan is able to score a clear win over Biden, that momentum will only build. If Biden stomps Ryan, the momentum built by Romney will fade somewhat. If the debate is a draw or close to it, which is the most likely outcome, the status quo - slight continued momentum for Romney - will reign. (And, yes, at the top of this item we made a De La Soul - best hip hop group of the 1990s - reference that no more than 50 people get.)

* Blood on the floor: The 2008 vice presidential debate between Biden and Sarah Palin was decidedly friendly. Biden didn't want to look like he was taking gratuitous shots at the already-maligned Palin, and the former Alaska governor was mostly just trying to get through the proceedings without any major slip-ups. But that was a major anomaly in the history of vice presidential debates. Remember that vice presidential picks are chosen - at least in part - for their willingness to be attack dogs. So when the two nominees share a debate stage, fireworks usually ensue. Who could forget Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy" line? Or Dick Cheney's dismissive attitude toward John Edwards in 2004? (Just in case you could forget those moments, we've have a post that details them here.)  Combine that history with the fact that both Biden and Ryan have shown a willingness to mix it up, and the likely outcome is a debate full of attacks and counterattacks.

* The fog of 2016: At the moment, both Biden and Ryan are perfectly content to serve as the "guy next to the guy." But that won't always be the case. Biden insiders insist that a 2016 presidential bid for the former Delaware senator remains a very real possibility, and there's no one in Republican circles who thinks that Ryan won't run for president in his own right - either in 2016 if Romney loses or later if Romney wins. While neither man will mention his future political ambitions in the 90-minute set-to, 2016 (and beyond) will be a subtext for every political operative - and most political reporters - watching the proceedings. Biden needs to prove that he can go gaffe-free, while Ryan has to demonstrate that he is more than just the wonk-in-chief. Think of it as a tryout of sorts - with tens of millions of people watching.

* The Ryan wonk out: Most of the pre-debate coverage has and will continue to focus on Biden. (Our two cents: Biden always has been and will again be a very solid debater; it's one of the reasons he caught Obama's eye as a potential VP.) But, in our mind, it's Ryan who has more to prove. Ryan has never - repeat, never - been on a debate stage this (symbolically) big before. And, Ryan's great strength is his reputation as a numbers and policy geek - both great things in a public servant but less great things in a political debater. If Ryan goes too far down a wonky rabbit hole - we wonder what one of those might look like - he could find himself fighting from behind against the much more experienced Biden. There's no doubt that the brunt of Ryan's debate prep has focused on  talking less like the chairman of the House Budget Committee and more like an average person, but the Wisconsin congressman is a hard-wired policy nerd. Subsuming that part of his personality will be a major challenge.

Obama says fundamentals of his campaign remain strong: Obama sat down with ABC News on Wednesday, saying he had a "bad night" at the debate last week but that his campaign remains strong.

"Gov. Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time I've had a bad night," Obama told Diane Sawyer. "But I think what's important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven't changed."

Obama added: "If you have a bad game you just move on. You look forward to the next one."

This is Obama recognizing that his supporters are a little dejected. Words are great, but a great debate from Biden would cure more ills.

American Commitment targets Brown, Kaine on coal: The conservative group American Commitment is launching a $400,000 radio ad buy in the Ohio and Virginia Senate races, the group tells The Fix.

The ads cast Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine as unfriendly to the coal industry.

"It's hard to believe President Obama and Sherrod Brown would want to close coals mines and power plants leading to higher energy costs and more job losses," says the narrator of the anti-Brown spot. The Virginia ad makes a similar argument.

Fixbits:

Ryan says he and Romney have been consistent on abortion.

Obama says he was "too polite" at the debate last week.

A University of Northern Florida poll in that state shows Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 45 percent.

Automated pollster Survey USA shows Ohio at Obama 45, Romney 44.

Bill Clinton mocks Romney.

The State Department says security was up to snuff at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Sarah Palin says she's still not ready to rule out a future presidential run.

Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) Twitter account briefly hails Holly Petraeus's work in the consumer protection office, but then his campaign deletes the tweet. Turns out Petraeus, David Petraeus's wife, was appointed by Brown's opponent, Elizabeth Warren (D).

Brown and Warren debated last night. Here's FixSean's recap.

At an Arizona Senate debate last night, Rep. Jeff Flake (R) said he wouldn't sign any more pledges. Flake is a current signer of the Americans for Tax Reform no-new-taxes pledge.

A new ad from national Democrats hits Connecticut GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon on Medicare and Social Security.

A Wisconsin GOP state lawmaker is drawing heat for passing along something his father taught him: "Some girls rape easy." Democrats are noting that Ryan endorsed the lawmaker.

Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) and opponent Richard Tisei (R) rumble in a debate Wednesday.

Must-reads:

"Goodbye, Mr. Scissorhands: Romney Recaptures Centrist Image" - Mike Murphy, Time

"Obama's Ohio Silver Lining" - Major Garrett, National Journal

"Romney shifts to more moderate stances on taxes, immigration, health care, education" - Karen Tumulty, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



532 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 11, 2012 Thursday 4:24 PM EST


5 news apps for the final 4 weeks;
Tools you can use to explore what the campaigns and political organizations are doing to bolster their candidates' chances.


BYLINE: Natalie Jennings


LENGTH: 449 words


With only 26 days left until Nov.6, it's prime time for presidential election watchers and news junkies.

Here are five tools from the Washington Post graphics and politics teams you can use to track ad spending, campaign visits, issue positions and electoral chances.

1. Electoral maps: Presidential, House, Senate and gubernatorial projections

Which states are really in play and which ones are solid for Obama or Romney? What do the polls say about who controls the Senate? You can see the latest projections on the presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races on this map. 

Want to embed them on your blog? Here are embeddable versions: President | Senate | House | Governor

2. Campaign finance explorer: Who is winning the money race? 

Track how much the candidates have earned, how much they have spent and how they are spending their money, and get similar data for outside spending groups like super PACs and individual donors. 

Get the embeddable version here.

3. Mad money: Track ads and ad spending

You can see which of the candidates is spending the most on ads and a list of outside groups that are making big campaign ad buys, plus where each is spending the most on political ads.  You can also watch recent campaign ads and see which Web ads are getting the most buzz on YouTube. 

4.  Presidential campaign stops: Follow those candidates

 Where are the presidential candidates, their running mates, and their spouses spending the most time? See just how many times they have been to swing states this summer, which states haven't gotten any visits from the candidates, and how many of their trips are for fundraisers on this tracker, and embed the map yourself with the button below.

5. Issue Engine: Endorse the candidates on policy positions

We have culled Obama's and Romney's statements on 18 issues, from abortion to taxes, so that you can determine who best represents your views. You can endorse the candidates based on those positions and post your endorsements directly to Facebook.

In case those aren't enough to keep you occupied and informed through election day, we've got a few bonus tools: You can take the ElectNext candidate matcher quiz on this page to find out who you come closest to agreeing with on the issues most important to you. 

And on the bottom of each non-blog political story on WashingtonPost.com, you can see a toolbar with the latest polling data, Twitter volume totals from the @MentionMachi ne and the latest from the Fact Checker.  Check it out here.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



533 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 11, 2012 Thursday 2:16 AM EST


Ad Watch: Former NBA player stars in Romney ad


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 126 words


Mitt Romney, "Facts are Clear," "Ohio Jobs," "Born and Raised in Nevada"

What it says: Mitt Romney is out with three new ads Friday, two targeted to swing states and one on the debt. In the Nevada ad above, former NBA player and former Obama supporter Greg Anthony says, "We've heard enough excuses" from the president. In the Ohio ad, Romney talks directly to the camera about manufacturing job losses.  

What it means: All three ads push familiar messages, but voters in Nevada and Ohio - states where Romney currently trails Obama - are getting a more direct appeal than usual. 

Who will see it: Ohio and Nevada, obviously. Romney has also just made ad buys in Virginia and Florida. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



534 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Regional Edition


Facing off on a tiny playing field


BYLINE: Amy Gardner


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1418 words


Despite an apparent poll bounce for Mitt Romney in recent weeks, the fundamental dynamic of the presidential electoral map appears to be locked in, with the two campaigns focused on the same nine states that have dominated for most of the year, according to strategists on both sides.

The Republican nominee has enjoyed some momentum after his winning performance in the first presidential debate, which has seemingly put once-written-off states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan back in the mix, according to polls out this week. But the Romney campaign appears to be resisting pressure from supporters to broaden the fight and, at least for now, is not expanding its path to the 270 electoral college votes needed to capture the White House.

That leaves Romney with a very narrow road to victory, one that probably requires him to win large battlegrounds such as Florida, Virginia and Colorado along with Ohio, a swing state so critical that he is making four stops there in two days this week.

Romney's advisers acknowledge that he still has work to do in Ohio. Just days ago, Romney moved five campaign workers to that state from Pennsylvania, one aide said. And though the Ohio race has become more competitive - with Romney drawing within five percentage points of President Obama, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday - the president still holds a lead in the state, without which no Republican has ever won the presidency.

If the electoral map for Romney remains relatively fixed, the same appears true for Obama, whose advisers say they are committed to the handful of states they targeted months ago. When the president seemed to hold a commanding lead across numerous states early last week, his strategists said they would not make a concerted play for some that appeared almost within reach, such as Arizona. Now that the race is closer, they say they are fortifying their borders, which allow him several options for getting to 270 electoral votes.

"What you've seen is a stable map for a very long time," Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager, said in an interview Tuesday.

The result is the smallest, most rigid playing field in recent history - one that excludes 41 states.

Locked-up states

Both campaigns agree that 36 states are not competitive this year, with 22 of them expected to vote for Romney and 14 for Obama. But the Obama states are more populous; when tallied according to electoral votes, these three dozen states give Obama 197 votes and Romney 169.

Obama and Romney have spent the bulk of their money and attention this year in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Five more states are not being heavily contested, though the campaigns do not agree that the outcomes there are certain.

No state illustrates the narrowness of the playing field more than Ohio, where the candidates are spending more time than anywhere else. Even with Romney's uptick in national polls, victory remains virtually impossible for him without Ohio; he could win Florida, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada and still lose without the Buckeye State. If anything, his bounce has pushed him to redouble his efforts within the existing electoral map rather than think about expanding it.

For Obama, there is no move to expand the map because he doesn't need any more states to win. His advisers also say there is no need, at least yet, to rejigger resources because they have been investing heavily all along. Ohio is a case in point: Obama has a paid staff of 700 on the ground there, and his advertising spending, though even with Romney's now, dwarfed that of his rival for much of the year.

"Ohio is a couple of things: It's winnable, it's expensive, and it's volatile," said Liz Brown, daughter of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and the head of the state Democratic Party's coordinated campaign, a joint get-out-the-vote effort of the party and the candidates. "The last few weeks we've gone from 'Obama's won Ohio' to 'Oh cr--, he gave a less-than-optimistic debate performance.' This up and down of the narrative around Ohio doesn't change those three facts. The strategy from the beginning has been a larger investment per capita in Ohio."

Certainly, Romney could still be tempted to make a more aggressive play for Pennsylvania or Michigan, states that have long been labeled battlegrounds - but that have tilted heavily toward Democrats in recent elections. And Obama, when he held a solid lead in virtually every swing state, was encouraged by some fellow Democrats to extend his ads into Arizona, Missouri and Indiana, three Republican-leaning states.

Romney political director Rich Beeson said he doesn't rule out an expansion of the map in the campaign's final month. He cautioned that the movement of staff members from Pennsylvania to Ohio does not signal a concession in Pennsylvania but rather reflects the importance of early voting in Ohio. The staffers will probably return to Pennsylvania before Nov. 6, he said. Beeson also noted that this year, compared with past years, more states are closely contested late in the cycle.

"There are a lot of states out there moving," he said.

But unlike in some past election cycles - such as in 2000, when George W. Bush swooped into long-shot New Jersey just before ballots were cast - the Obama and Romney campaigns are showing unusual restraint by sticking to their long-standing electoral strategies.

"A lot of it's just got to do with the polarization of the country," said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist helping the Romney campaign. "The states that are purple are relatively few in number. The states that are red and blue are relatively large in number. Presidential contests are directly correlated to where you have split population centers that produce mixed results."

Shrinking the field

A few factors explain why this year's playing field is so small and unchanging.

First, demographic shifts have taken past battlegrounds off the map. New Mexico, for instance, was in the red column just eight years ago, when Bush won the state and his second term. Since then, both sides have seen it as irreversibly blue.

Similarly, Indiana, which Obama won four years ago, was deemed out of reach for him early on because its conservative electorate does not favor his policies. Even TV ads that have wafted into northeastern Indiana from several Ohio markets haven't moved the needle. The same is true for northwest Arizona, where households have been inundated with TV ads from Las Vegas stations but polling numbers haven't changed.

"There's no evidence of spillover," said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who recently helped conduct the Howey/DePauw poll in Indiana. "Obama is losing by big margins."

Another factor is the rise in data about where voters are, who they are and whether they can be persuaded to vote a certain way. Through commercial databases, polling, phone-banking and door-knocking, campaigns know more about voters than ever before. They know who is persuadable and who is not. They know how many contacts it takes to reach a voter, how much that would cost and whether that cost is worthwhile, given how liberal or conservative - how winnable - a state is.

Some states move in and out of the competitive zone. At the outset of this election cycle, advisers from both parties thought Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania or Michigan might drift into play. Additionally, outside groups have aired ads in a wider field that has included Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan. But those lists have shrunk recently. A confluence of circumstances - including growing Latino populations and the popularity of Obama's auto-industry bailout - have given this year's playing field its uniquely narrow borders.

It's possible that the field could shrink further, but only if Obama pulls out of states he decides he can't win or doesn't need. North Carolina is the best example of this: It has been rated by most pollsters as a likely win for Romney, but the president has invested heavily there, perhaps only to force Romney to do the same. If that was the strategy, it worked; Republicans have spent tens of millions on the airwaves in North Carolina to match Obama's investment, and Romney is scheduled to travel there for a campaign appearance Thursday.

Romney has few such options. He needs to win more swing states overall, meaning he can't afford to pull out of any of them without looking like he's conceding the race.

gardnera@washpost.com

Dan Keating contributed to this story.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



535 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


Obama vows tougher approach in next debate


BYLINE: Scott Wilson;David Nakamura


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A08


LENGTH: 1303 words


President Obama is promising a more aggressive approach in his debate next week with Mitt Romney and is offering some clues about how he intends to blunt his Republican rival's momentum and reassure jittery Democratic supporters.

The president and his proxies have rolled out a sharper-edged message in the week since his lackluster first debate, hammering Romney over his changing positions on such central issues as tax cuts, health care and education.

The Democratic argument has been that Romney lied about his plans on the stage last week in front of 68 million television viewers in a way that disguises their potential impact on middle-class families.

In recent campaign advertising and in the president's post-debate stump speeches, the outlines of Obama's new approach are visible - and appear to reflect the lines of argument and rebuttal that he failed to make onstage in Denver. The strategy may become even more visible Thursday night, when Vice President Biden debates Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan in their only face-to-face encounter.

Obama has tested some catchy phrases in recent days. "That's not leadership - that's salesmanship," the president said of Romney at a Tuesday campaign rally at Ohio State University, employing the kind of one-liner that his advisers had dismissed as un-presidential before the first debate.

In a radio interview Wednesday, Obama said he had been "too polite" onstage last week with Romney. It was the latest of several defenses the campaign has offered up since his performance in Denver; earlier, aides had said Obama was simply too stunned by Romney's deceit to reply adequately.

Either way, Obama vowed to respond more energetically at their next matchup, at Hofstra University in New York on Tuesday.

"It's fair to say we will see a little more activity at the next" debate, Obama said on the "The Tom Joyner Morning Show," a nationally syndicated radio program. "We have four weeks left in this election, and we're going to take it to them and make sure everyone understands what's at stake."

Romney advisers have called Obama's questions about their candidate's honesty evidence that the president is unable to defend his record on job creation, health care and the management of the deficit. Romney has sought to press his post-debate advantage in recent days, even taking on Obama's foreign policy record, once seen as the incumbent's strength.

In the radio interview, Obama said he expected the race to turn back his way, beginning Thursday night with the vice-presidential debate. He also dismissed the Democratic angst that has followed his performance in Denver as the same misplaced doubts that dogged his campaign four years ago.

"By next week, I think a lot of the hand-wringing will be complete because we're going to go ahead and win this thing," Obama said. "You were around in 2008. How many times were people saying we weren't going to win?"

In a separate interview with ABC News's Diane Sawyer on Wednesday, Obama said of the debate: "Governor Romney had a good night. I had a bad night. It's not the first time I've had a bad night."

But he denied the debate might have handed the election to his rival. "What's important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven't changed," Obama said, according to a transcript released by ABC News. "You know, Governor Romney went to a lot of trouble to try to hide what his positions are."

Polls tighten

Since the debate, the Democratic mood has darkened, with a marked tightening in national and swing-state opinion polls that has thrown the election into question with less than a month to go.

Worried supporters are hoping Biden, an experienced debater, delivers a well-argued defense of the administration's record and a pointed critique of the Romney-Ryan candidacy that Obama largely failed to do last week.

"They had a strategy last time - a failed strategy," former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell (D) said of the Obama campaign, whose advisers counseled the president not to be overly aggressive, for fear of looking petty onstage. "They changed strategies. But if I were advising them, I'd say don't just turn this into a negative campaign. Talk about what you've done and your plans for the future."

Obama will travel to Williamsburg, Va., on Saturday for three days of preparation with the same team that advised him last week, including Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has played Romney in mock debates with Obama; White House adviser David Plouffe; campaign adviser David Axelrod; and communications consultants Anita Dunn and Ron Klain.

Campaign officials have been largely silent on specifics of the preparation and Obama's intent. But since the debate in Denver, the president and his proxies have offered a road map for what new to expect.

On Wednesday, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards blasted Romney for seeming to back away from his anti-abortion position by suggesting in an interview with the Des Moines Register that he would not actively pursue legislation that would outlaw abortions.

The conference call underscored the Obama campaign's concern over its lost edge with female voters, a once-sizable advantage that has largely evaporated since the Denver debate.

"With 26 days to go, he's trying to soften his image," Cutter said, referring to Romney. "We're going to hold him accountable."

Swing-state blitz

During visits to four swing states, including two visits to Ohio, after the last debate, Obama has sought to make the case that Romney misled viewers last week.

In addition, the Obama campaign and an auxiliary super PAC have reinforced the message with specific critiques of Romney's debate statements in those states, plus several others now more in play after Obama's performance in Denver.

Three days after the debate, the Obama campaign began broadcasting an ad called "Dishonest" in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. The spot focuses on Romney's debate contention that he does not have a $5 trillion tax-cut plan, something Obama has said he has been campaigning on for months.

"If we can't trust him to be honest now, how can we trust him in the White House?" the ad asks.

On Tuesday, the campaign released another ad in swing states that accuses Romney of repeatedly raising nursing-home fees during his tenure as Massachusetts governor and threatening Medicaid, an important way middle-class families pay to place elderly parents in nursing homes.

"We have a president who won't let that happen," the ad notes.

Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Obama's reelection, has echoed the danger-to-the-middle-class message as part of a $30 million advertising blitz in the final month before the election.

In an ad running in a half-dozen swing states, the group argues that Romney intends to cut public school funding to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, ending with the line: "If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses."

Neera Tanden, president for the liberal Center for American Progress, acknowledged that the race is tightening. But she said Obama has plenty of time to regain control if he is more willing to confront Romney directly about his changing positions.

"The president has an obligation not to be aggressive, but to say with a smile and point out to the American people that when a candidate says 'A' six months ago and 'Z' a month before the election, is he going to say 'M' when he's president?" Tanden said.

For his part, Obama is projecting an air of confidence, making reference during the radio interview to an Internet meme featuring his photo with a superimposed slogan.

"As some of those e-mails going around with my picture on it say, 'I got this,'â[#x20ac][#x160]" the president said.

wilsons@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



536 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


Romney's Syria plan: Easier said than done


BYLINE: Walter Pincus


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 940 words


Does Mitt Romney understand the implications of his campaign pledge to "ensure" that Syrian opposition members "who share our values" will "obtain the arms they need" to defeat President Bashir al-Assad's "tanks, helicopters and fighter jets"?

It's quite easy for a speechwriter in Boston or Washington to put such promises on paper, and even easier for the candidate to make them in front of American flags to an audience of Virginia Military Institute cadets as he did on Monday.

Does he plan to add to the task of CIA and military intelligence officers who already are trying to identify the right Syrians to receive intelligence and communications equipment along with humanitarian assistance? Sorting out which among almost 100 groups deserve even this non-military help is one of the reasons the Obama administration is holding back from doing even more.

What other test does Romney have in mind to make sure various militia leaders with forces of varied sectarian, religious, criminal and even jihadist backgrounds "share our values"? Does he plan to link U.S. military and other material assistance to militia leaders to pledges to respect responsibilities that he listed, such as the rights of "all their citizens including women and minorities . . . space for civil society, a free media, political parties and an independent judiciary"?

Let's examine the harder tasks for the CIA and Pentagon that would emerge if they were tasked with carrying out the rest of Romney's pledge.

Start with his promise to "defeat Assad's . . . fighter jets." Setting up a no-fly zone, which Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have been recommending for months, is the only practical way to accomplish Romney's proposal.

It requires attacks on a variety of targets, including Syrian air bases and aircraft, ammunition and fuel storage facilities, radar and command-and-control centers and surface-to-air missile batteries. The initial March 2011 attack on Libya to establish a no-fly zone required 112 Tomahawk missiles fired at 20 targets, followed by continuous air missions - and Moammar Gaddafi's air defenses were far less capable than Assad's.

The Pentagon has already drawn up contingency plans for such a step. On March 7, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that establishing a no-fly zone would have to be led by U.S. forces and take "an extended period of time and a great number of aircraft."

Dempsey noted: "They [Syria] have approximately five times more sophisticated air defense systems than existed in Libya. . . . All of their air defenses are arrayed on their western border, which is their population center."

Did Romney or his speechwriters read that testimony? Did they understand, as Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta explained to the senators seven months ago, that suppressing Syria's air defenses would involve heavy civilian casualties, since Assad's forces were strategically deployed in and around cities?

Perhaps Romney did some reading since Monday. On Wednesday, at a campaign event in Mount Vernon, Ohio, he repeated that he would identify "reasonable and responsible" Syrian dissidents and "provide funding and weapons to them." But he said that "the active role" he planned "doesn't mean sending in troops or dropping bombs."

What happened to making sure the dissidents "share our values"? And how does Romney plan to defeat Assad's fighter jets without dropping bombs?

The two other elements of his Monday pledge involve arming the Syrian opposition to deal with Assad's helicopters and tanks. They are less dramatic, but worth reviewing.

The most probable weapon to deal with Syria's armed helicopters are shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Assad's forces reportedly have large stocks of an old Russian version called the SA-7, and there are reports the rebel forces have already been using them, probably after taking them during raids on Assad's ammunition dumps.

Gaddafi's military had stocks of these weapons, and U.S. and NATO intelligence have been trying to track down about 10,000 of the Libyan weapons that vanished when its military collapsed. As one former senior intelligence official said recently, this is one type of weapon that the U.S. will not distribute to any group in the Middle East, given its threat to commercial aircraft anywhere in the world.

As for tanks, Romney may be a bit behind the times. For almost a year, Syrian rebels have been using improvised explosive devices, the IEDs that have been the main cause of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. In Syria, they have been used against Assad's battle tanks, to attack convoys, and even to blow up buildings. U.S. intelligence sees them as one sign that jihadists have entered the fight on the rebel side.

Al-Jazeera has reported that Syrian rebels have set up a buffer zone along the Turkish border. And reports have circulated since July about a clandestine facility near the southern Turkish city of Adana that is being used as a "nerve center" for Turkey and other nations aiding the rebels. Sixty miles from the Syrian border, the secret facility is near Incirlik Air Base, which is a communications and transportation hub as well as a site for NATO and U.S. military exercises. Some 1,500 U.S. personnel are there.

Romney said the U.S. should be working "vigorously with our international partners to support" the Syrian opposition "rather than sitting on the sidelines." Many of those Americans at Incirlik already may be doing much more than sitting on the sidelines when it comes to Syria.

pincusw@washpost.com

For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



537 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 11, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


All that cash, all those underdogs


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 784 words


You'd think that Jim Messina would have been in a pretty good mood last Saturday, when President Obama's reelection campaign reported that it was close to raising $1 billion for 2012.

But before long, Messina, Obama's campaign manager, was sounding the alarm bell.

"Outside groups are flooding the airwaves with negative ads trashing President Obama and everything we've accomplished together in the past four years," Messina wrote in an e-mail announcing the impressive fundraising haul. "Over the course of the next week alone, these groups are planning an unprecedented negative ad blitz in battleground states across the country."

In the race for campaign cash, it seems, everyone is an underdog.

Both Obama and his challenger, Republican nominee Mitt Romney, are certain to surpass the $1 billion mark in resources between their campaigns, parties and outside allies. The benchmark will easily make Obama and Romney the two most formidable political fundraisers in U.S. history.

Yet both sides routinely cast themselves as paupers in danger of being outspent by a monied opponent. In fundraising pleas, supporters are told that another $5 or $13 or $25 is all that stands between the candidate and victory in November.

"One billion dollars," began a fundraising e-mail on Monday from Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades. "For the first time in history, a political campaign will hit the billion-dollar mark.. . . Liberals will not give up their power easily, so it's imperative that we all come together to stand up against them."

In reality, neither side is hurting much for money. Even if the two candidates ceased all fundraising today, 2012 would rank as the most expensive presidential general election ever, largely because both have opted out of a public financing system used by previous candidates.

The Obama campaign says it raised $181 million in September with the Democratic National Committee, marking the best fundraising month of the cycle. The total is just shy of the record $193 million collected by Obama and the DNC in September 2008.

The bounty puts Obama and the Democrats on a path to exceed $1 billion raised for 2012, which is more than they raised in 2008. The main difference this time is that Obama has not raised as much cash directly for his own campaign as he did in 2008, relying more on larger checks collected by the DNC.

Romney has yet to release his September fundraising total, but he had raised about $640 million with the Republican National Committee through the end of August, disclosure records show. Although he has brought in less overall than Obama and the Democrats, Romney raised more in May, June and July and nearly matched Obama in August.

But Romney's key advantage comes from outside his campaign, where a well-funded network of conservative groups has been able to collect unlimited checks to pay for a barrage of television ads. The combination has put Romney's side at rough parity with Obama and his allies in spending so far, according to disclosure records and advertising estimates.

Yet the hard sell continues. Rich Beeson, Romney's political director, told supporters this week that "the billion-dollar Obama juggernaut won't go down without a fight." Vice President Biden, meanwhile, warned that the GOP was in the midst of "a $23 million week-long ad blitz attacking Barack in 10 battleground states."

"Our organizing depends on budgets and those budgets depend on you, right now," Biden continued in a fundraising e-mail. "This campaign needs to make critical decisions this week, and with just 28 days to go, there's no 'I'll get to it later.' If you've been waiting for the right moment to chip in, now is the time."

Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, said that "saying you're threatened is a proven way to raise money" in politics. He noted that by approaching $1 billion, each of the presidential candidates will spend about as much as all major U.S. Senate candidates spent in 2008 and 2010 combined.

"It strikes me that President Obama and Governor Romney each will spend more than enough to be heard," Malbin said. "I do not know if there is ever a point of complete saturation, but we're clearly in the land of diminishing returns."

eggend@washpost.com

For more Influence Industry columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



538 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Debate's Winner? One Costume Got a Big Bounce


BYLINE: By TRISTAN HALLMAN


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; CITY ROOM; Pg. 18


LENGTH: 288 words


As soon as Sarafina Panasside heard Mitt Romney say last week that he would end the federal subsidy for PBS, she knew it: the Big Bird bounce was going to change Halloween season.

"Sure enough," said Ms. Panasside, 31, a cashier at theHalloween Adventure costume shop near Union Square, "three people came in and bought the costumes when I came in the next day."

As costume shops across New York prepare for Halloween, Big Bird - singled out by Mr. Romney during the presidential debate last week as the embodiment of wasteful federal spending - is the flavor of the moment.

Several shops, including Halloween Adventure, said Tuesday that after the Obama campaign rushed out an ad mocking Mr. Romney as demonizing Big Bird, they had sold out, and were ordering more. Other shops that did not stock the costume said that people had been asking for it.

At the Ricky's on West 34th Street, Jonathan Caraballo said some customers had asked for the full-body suits but did not seem particularly interested in the partial version that lacks feet and leaves the wearer's face exposed.

Nationally, at Disguise Costumes in Poway, Calif., officially licensed manufacturer of Sesame Street costumes, Maddie Gerety, the product manager, said there had been a big spike in Big Bird sales - particularly in the adult male size.

Big Bird's bosses at "Sesame Street" seem unamused. The nonprofit group behind the PBS show has asked the Obama campaign to stop using Big Bird in its political advertising.

But Ms. Panasside is happy to stir the pot.

"My last customer called 20 minutes ago and asked if I had Big Bird," she said. "And I said, 'No, Mitt Romney took them all.'"

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/big-bird-costumes-in-demand-for-a-post-debate-halloween/


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



539 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Message to Supporters From Obama Campaign: Steady On


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY; Jim Rutenberg reported from New York, and Jeff Zeleny from Columbus, Ohio. Reporting was contributed by Michael Shear from Washington, Nicholas Confessore from New York and Helene Cooper from Columbus.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 1098 words


A day after some national polls showed President Obama's edge over Mitt Romney evaporating, he responded first thing on Tuesday with a new commercial featuring Big Bird of ''Sesame Street'' and Mr. Romney's debate-night vow to cut financing for PBS.

It did not exactly take flight.

The creators of ''Sesame Street'' had asked Mr. Obama to leave Big Bird out of it. And even some Democrats said the ad, suggesting that Mr. Romney would be tougher on ''Sesame Street'' than on Wall Street, was not the salve that nervous party activists and volunteers were looking for.

''The right message is that on Friday, we saw great economic news,'' said Brian Moran, the chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, referring to new data showing that the national unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September. ''Things are moving in the right direction. That's where the focus should be, and not on the debate.''

Big Bird was part of a broader effort by Mr. Obama and his team to reassure supporters -- many of whom were confident a week ago that the election was all but assured -- that his campaign had not lost its intensity or focus. By later in the day, Mr. Obama was delivering a spirited campaign appearance in Columbus, Ohio, his aides were reaching out to big donors with a calming message that they had always expected a tight finish, and the campaign had released new ads in battleground states on issues like potential cuts to Medicaid.

The Big Bird ad may not have inspired universal confidence among Democrats. But if nothing else, they said, any sense of complacency in their ranks was now gone.

''Certainly, you're not hearing anyone out here saying this is in the bag, and you were beginning to get that sense,'' Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said in an interview. ''Dire is the wrong word, but I do think it is a wake-up call.''

Speaking at a rally in Columbus late Tuesday, Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of showing ''salesmanship'' but ''not leadership,'' telegraphing a new line of attack that Mr. Obama's aides hoped would help to bolster his supporters.

Inside Mr. Obama's Chicago headquarters, senior advisers had already worked to calm younger staff members by counseling them to tune out the natural, if jarring, gyrations of a closely fought presidential race. Supportive Democratic governors were doing the same on Tuesday. ''Did we forget no-drama Obama?'' Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana asked in an interview, reprising the go-steady slogan of Mr. Obama's 2008 effort.

After a Pew Research Center poll on Monday that suggested Mr. Romney's debate performance had helped him erase Mr. Obama's lead nationally, a Gallup survey released Tuesday showed a similar result, with the candidates statistically tied.

But polls in battleground states appeared to show the race to be back where it was before Mr. Obama went on a run, and Mr. Romney stumbled, after their party conventions, with Mr. Obama for the most part holding slight but shrinking edges in surveys, within their margins of sampling of error.

A new CNN poll of likely voters in Ohio showed the president to have a four-point advantage. (A Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll and a Washington Post poll before the debate had shown a lead for Mr. Obama of 8 to 10 percentage points.)

And a new survey by WMUR and the New Hampshire University Survey Center showed Mr. Obama to have a 6-point lead in the state, down from 15 points a week ago.

Officials at the pro-Obama ''super PAC'' Priorities USA Action, and at unions including the AFL-CIO, said that the electoral battleground, and their plans to tackle it, have not changed.

''You can't deny that he could have done a lot better in the debate and that would have continued the confidence people had in the outcome,'' said Mike Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO's political director. ''But in terms of what we do, which is we only focus on the ground, people are committed and are still committed because the economic issues and choices are so stark.''

Similarly, Gov. Bev Perdue of North Carolina said debate performance aside, ''We've always known that it was going to be a scintilla of a vote that will decide the election here, and we are focusing on our strengths, which is our ground game.''

There was no denying, however, that the momentum was with Mr. Romney, and it was the Obama campaign's turn to face questions about its strategy, approach and candidate performance the way Mr. Romney's campaign did in the weeks before the first debate.

With the online Drudge Report running a headline about a scathing article from Andrew Sullivan, the usually reliable Obama supporter who said the president had thrown ''in the towel,'' agitated donors traded hopes that Mr. Obama would show more fight.

''I wouldn't use the word 'panic,' but there is a sense that everything the campaign told us about the need to continue the fight is absolutely true,'' said Justin Buell, a member of Mr. Obama's national finance council in San Francisco.

He and other Obama finance team members said there was at least a bright spot in that the latest turn in the campaign appeared to be driving a new round of donations.

''After the initial 24 hours where people recognized that it wasn't our best night, people seemed to double down and dig in,'' said Andy Spahn, a Los Angeles public relations executive who helped organize a fund-raiser Mr. Obama held there Sunday. ''People who were watching and feeling him to be comfortable ahead, and not writing those last checks, they have felt the race tighten, and they are coming through.''

Other fund-raisers said the instructions from Chicago were ''Put your heads down'' and ''redouble your efforts.''

Some Democrats questioned just how much Mr. Obama would gain from his Big Bird commercial. ''I don't think anyone would argue this ad will make any sort of contribution to the decision in this race,'' said David Doak, a longtime Democratic advertising strategist, who added that it could be more effective in getting free attention from the news media, which it did.

Aides said the spot was to run only on cable, including comedy programs, and was meant to direct the focus to the budget priories of Mr. Romney, who criticized Mr. Obama for talking about ''saving Big Bird'' instead of ''saving good jobs.''

''The idea was to provoke a discussion and create a little viral activity, and we've done that,'' said David Axelrod, the president's chief strategist.

By midday, the campaign had released a new ad about Mr. Romney's proposed Medicaid cuts and their potential effect on middle-class families with older relatives in nursing homes.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/us/politics/obama-campaign-tells-supporters-steady-on.html


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama during a campaign rally at Ohio State University in Columbus, where he accused Mitt Romney of showing ''salesmanship'' but ''not leadership.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
'BIG, YELLOW, A MENACE TO OUR ECONOMY': Images from the Obama campaign's new commercial, which was made after Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Obama for talking about ''saving Big Bird'' instead of ''saving good jobs.'' The ad puts Big Bird in a league with the likes of L. Dennis Kozlowski, left, and Ken Lay, right. (PHOTOGRAPH BY OBAMA FOR AMERICA)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



540 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 10, 2012 Wednesday


The Early Word: China


BYLINE: JADA F. SMITH


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 484 words



HIGHLIGHT: Political news from today's Times and a look at the latest happenings in Washington.


Today's Times








Happenings in Washington






LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



541 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)


October 10, 2012 Wednesday


The Lying Precedent


BYLINE: JULIET LAPIDOS


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 232 words



HIGHLIGHT: If Mitt Romney wins, candidates will be justified in assuming that they can tell different lies to different audiences, and that voters will actually reward them for it.


Consider a few videos as Mitt Romney tries, in the last weeks of the campaign, to appear vaguely moderate.

The first shows Mr. Romney at CPAC calling himself "severely conservative." The second, an Obama campaign ad from April, compiles a greatest hits of his severely conservative statements. The third, from Daily Kos, compares what Mr. Romney said at last week's debate with previous comments.

It's impossible to say which Mitt Romney is the "real" Mitt Romney. But what we don't know about Mr. Romney seems secondary to what we do know: He doesn't think authenticity or consistency or conviction matter. It's not just that he tweaks his message to suit his audience; he's willing to change his message for his audience. (And if he's president, his audience will be the Republican-dominated, Tea-Party-influenced House.)

It must be the case that many Americans recognize his contortions, and will vote for him regardless because they don't like the president. That's their right. But if Mr. Romney wins, he'll set a nasty precedent. Candidates will be justified in assuming not only that they can lie, but that they can tell different lies to different audiences from week to week, and voters will actually reward them.



LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



542 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION


Costas gets MLB call after 12-year layoff;
Nats-Cards game 'bonus' for TV vet


BYLINE: Michael Hiestand, mhiestand@usatoday.com, USA TODAY Sports


SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 3C


LENGTH: 670 words


On the day the New York Yankees beat the Seattle Mariners to win the American League Championship Series in 2000, USA TODAY was asking whether Alonzo Mourning could somehow overcome his just-announced kidney disease to return to the NBA. What would happen to the Indiana Hoosiers as they started practices for the first time in 29 years without Bobby Knight? Would the Dallas Cowboys replace quarterback Troy Aikman, who had just thrown five interceptions in a loss, with backup Randall Cunningham?

But as NBC's Bob Costas called that Yankees' victory Oct. 17, 2000, nobody would have thought to ponder this: Was Costas, synonymous with TV baseball, about to disappear from MLB's postseason until, say, the then-nonexistent Washington Nationals made the playoffs?

The 12-year streak ends today as Costas, with Jim Kaat, calls MLB Network's St. Louis Cardinals-Nationals playoff (1 p.m. ET). Costas, 60, who already calls about a dozen MLBN regular-season games, says the chance to call one of two first-ever MLBN playoff games "is a bonus. At this stage of my career, if you'd asked me a couple years ago if I'd do postseason baseball again, I'd have said no."

Costas realized being obsessed with baseball didn't guarantee he would always be able to call playoff action even before NBC lost MLB TV rights in 2000. "Everyone thought baseball would be on NBC forever, like the Masters on CBS, until we lost it (to CBS) in 1989," he says. "NBC's Game of the Week was a legendary franchise. Now, you understand it's the nature of the business, and you don't feel entitled to anything."

Such as, he says, getting to call a World Series again, even though a recent Fox deal gives the network that event through 2021. "In Joe Buck, they have one of the best play-by-play men in sports television," Costas says. "Fox is set with him for a long time."

Costas, however, had long felt entitled to his opinions. He was famously unimpressed with baseball first adding wild-card playoff teams -- "it de-emphasized the importance and drama of finishing first" -- and suggests MLB didn't get it exactly right this year in adding two wild-card playoff teams from each league that meet in one-and-done matchups.

He would prefer to have wild cards meet in best-of-three series, with all games on the field of the teams with better records. Those series would make wild-card teams use up some of their starting pitching and give division winners a bit more rest. Then, he says, "you truly further advantage first-place teams."

Costas will encounter something with his postseason play-by-play that he didn't face in his previous calls -- instant viewer reaction via social media. MLB says its playoffs had already generated more Facebook and Twitter mentions -- 1.34 million -- than for last year's entire first round. Costas seems ready: "Today, there's instant reaction to everything. Some of it is informed, a lot of it isn't."

Spice rack: Fox senior vice president Jerry Steinberg says its World Series coverage will include a camera with replays that could generate as many as 20,000 frames per second, the most seen on Fox -- up from about 60 frames per second on regular replays. Steinberg says viewers will be able "to see the ball compress" when hit. The technology, he says, originated with the U.S. military looking at replays of missile impacts. One appeal of TV sports is it excludes many divisive issues outside sports. So CBS, or any network, isn't helping itself by allowing announcers to do political endorsements, which will inevitably antagonize someone. CBS NCAA basketball analyst Greg Anthony, once a vice-chairman of Nevada's Young Republicans, is in a Mitt Romney ad saying he voted for President Obama but has "lost faith" in him and likes Romney as a "no-excuses kind of guy." CBS spokeswoman Jen Sabatelle says the network declines to comment. Anthony was not available for comment. The NFL Network hired Andrea Kremer to report on issues involving player health and safety. She'll continue to report for HBO's Real Sports.


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



543 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 10:11 PM EST


NRCC raises $12.4 million in September


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 991 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

FIRST ON THE FIX: 

* The National Republican Congressional Committee raised $12.4 million in September and has $29.5 million cash on hand, a committee aide tells The Fix. The committee spent heavily during the month - about $20 million - while it went after more than a dozen Democratic seats and attempted to define Democratic challengers early. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has yet to release its fundraising totals.

* The NRCC has pulled its remaining ad reservations in a top-targeted district in upstate New York - the 27th, which is held by Rep. Kathy Hochul (D). The seat remains a top pickup prospect (it was John McCain's best 2008 district in the state under the newly drawn map), but the GOP group American Action Network just announced a $600,000 buy for the final three weeks, which allows the NRCC to pull out its $372,000 in reservations and still have air cover.

* Meanwhile, both the NRCC and DCCC today pulled their reservations for Oct. 23-29 in Philadelphia - $788,000 in savings for Republicans and $1.1 million for Democrats. The money could have gone to any of four races: Reps. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) and Pat Meehan (R-Pa.). Both committees still have the final week reserved, but the seats are looking safer for the GOP.

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Joe Biden's greatest (and not-so-greatest) debate hits

The path to 270: How Obama and Romney can win the electoral vote (VIDEO)

Republican Rep. Scott DesJarlais pressed mistress to get an abortion, report says

What Big Bird tells us about the 2012 campaign

The expanding Congressional battlefield

The ads Senate Republicans have dreaded in Missouri are here

The United States of Search

Why Republicans are spending so much money to defeat Sherrod Brown

Senate GOP forced to play plenty of defense, despite majority hopes

Is Ann Romney saving her husband's campaign? She just might be.

Voters prefer Michelle Obama and Ann Romney to their husbands

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Mitt Romney once again promised to defund Planned Parenthood, telling reporters Wednesday, "The actions I'll take immediately is to remove funding for Planned Parenthood." In an interview published Tuesday, Romney appeared to pivot away from his anti-abortion position, saying "there's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda."

* Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock raised an impressive $3 million during the third quarter, ending the period with $1.3 million in the bank. That means he spent nearly as much ($2.5 million) as he brought in. Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) gubernatorial campaign isn't pleased about an attack ad from an outside group which casts Pence as an extremist and links him to Mourdock. The Pence campaign has requested the ad be taken down. 

* Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson's (R) says he raised $2 million during the six weeks since the Republican Senate primary, which left his coffers depleted. 

* The Romney campaign's newest TV ad is all about taxes. The spot includes debate footage of the Republican nominee saying he won't raise taxes, and charging that President Obama would prefer to raise them. 

* Former Democratic congressman Jay Inslee's new TV ad is filled with footage of former president Bill Clinton stumping for the Democrat in his campaign for governor of Washington. 

 * Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) raised $2.7 million for his Senate campaign during the third quarter - his most productive three-month period of the cycle. Mack's campaign didn't immediately release his cash on hand figure. 

* Independent former governor Angus King leads Secretary of State Charlie Summers (R) 50 percent to 24 percent, with state Sen. Cynthia Dill (D) running third at 12 percent, according to a Pan Atlantic SMS Group poll. The live-caller survey was conducted Sept. 24-28. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* There are dueling polls telling different stories in the Arizona Senate race. Former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) holds a slight, 47 percent to 43 percent lead over Rep. Jeff Flake (R), according to a Democratic poll conducted Oct. 7-9 by Harstad Strategic Research for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Meanwhile, Flake leads Carmona 49 percent to 43 percent in a poll conducted during the same dates by the Tarrance Group. 

* Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) raised a district record $1 million during the third quarter for his campaign against Democratic challenger Brad Schneider. Dold faces a tough reelection fight - he is running in the most Democratic district in the country held by a Republican. 

* In advance of his third debate against Elizabeth Warren (D) Wednesday night in Springfield, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) released a new TV ad aimed at reaching out specifically to voters in western Massachusetts, where Springfield is located. 

* West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) released a new TV ad in which he says, "My opponent wants to make this campaign about President Obama and the mess in Washington. It's not. It's about West Virginia. I sued the Obama administration to protect coal and won."

* Writing that former congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick (D) "ridiculed, belittled, cut off and scolded her opponent in a manner that exceeded rudeness," in her meeting with the editorial board, the Arizona Republic endorsed Republican Jonathan Paton in Arizona's 1st District race. The paper endorsed Kirkpatrick in her 2008 and 2010 campaigns.

THE FIX MIX:

Read their lips.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



544 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


The Snuffleupagus in the room


BYLINE: Dana Milbank


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 787 words


The Obama campaign's new ad ruffles my feathers.

It's not the message per se. The Big Bird spot fairly points out that Mitt Romney seems more interested in cracking down on "Sesame Street" than on Wall Street. The problem is President Obama has, to mix animal metaphors, taken the bait - and he's pursuing a red herring.

Big Bird is not the problem. The problem is Snuffleupagus.

The threat presented by Romney's budget is not in the few cuts he has specified but in the vastly larger amount of unseen cuts he has yet to identify.

At the Denver debate, Romney said he would eliminate Obamacare (doing so would actually increase the budget deficit, because of related tax hikes) and the public-broadcasting subsidy, which is $445 million a year - or little more than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of federal spending. But Romney proposes to cut federal spending by trillions of dollars - more than $5 trillion over the next decade, assuming he follows the sort of blueprint laid out by his running mate, Paul Ryan. That threatens much more than Muppets and monsters. Human lives are at stake.

As if to remind us of this, Rep. Darrell Issa, the indefatigable Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has called a hearing for noon Wednesday even though Congress is in a weeks-long recess. The emergency cause for the hearing? Probing "The Security Failures of Benghazi" - lapses in diplomatic security that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

The purpose of the pre-election hearing, presumably, is to embarrass the administration for inadequate diplomatic security. But Issa seems unaware of the irony that diplomatic security is inadequate partly because of budget cuts forced by his fellow Republicans in Congress.

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program - well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration's request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans' proposed cuts to her department would be "detrimental to America's national security" - a charge Republicans rejected.

Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan's budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

The Romney campaign argues that such extrapolations are unfair, because Romney and Ryan haven't specified which programs they would cut and by how much. And that's the problem: The danger in Romney's plan is not in the few cuts he has detailed but in the many he has not.

If Romney follows through on the tax cuts he has endorsed, increases defense spending by $2.1 trillion over a decade as promised and maintains Social Security and Medicare as they are for those 55 and older, he'd need to cut everything else government does by nearly a third - or more than $200 billion - in 2016. By 2022, the liberal Center for American Progress calculates, such government functions, including the State Department, would be cut by 53 percent. The $445 million Romney saves by axing PBS will get him less than half of 1 percent of the way toward the budget cuts he would need to make by 2016.

Obama is making a mistake in allowing the discussion to be about Big Bird, which he continued to do on Monday, telling supporters that "Elmo has been seen in a white Suburban" (apparently a botched reference to O.J. Simpson's white Bronco). His new campaign ad, likewise, has a cute punch line: "Mitt Romney, taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest."

Obama would do better to focus on Big Bird's elephantine friend Aloysius Snuffleupagus. For years, Big Bird tried to convince the skeptical grown-ups on "Sesame Street" that his "imaginary" friend was real. Finally, after concern that the grown-ups' dismissal of Big Bird's truthful claim might dissuade children from reporting sexual abuse, "Sesame Street's" producers made Snuffy visible to the grown-ups.

In the presidential campaign, Big Bird is a distraction from Romney's real cuts, which he is not yet allowing Americans to see. Obama should be drawing attention to the elephant in the room.

danamilbank@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



545 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


BYLINE: Natalie Jennings;Nia-Malika Henderson


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 180 words


After TV ad, Sesame Workshop affirms its nonpartisan mission

Just hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad mocking Mitt Romney for saying he will cut funding for PBS and caustically linking Big Bird to Wall Street villains, Sesame Workshop posted this statement on its Web site:

"Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down."

In the Democrats' new ad, the eight-foot-tall bird towers over Wall Street while an announcer says: "Big, yellow, a menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about. It's Sesame Street. Mitt Romney. Taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest."

A Romney spokesman addressed the ad, saying it's "troubling that the president's message, the president's focus 28 days out from Election Day is Big Bird."

- Natalie Jennings and Nia-Malika Henderson


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



546 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


China dismisses U.S. security fears


BYLINE: William Wan;Craig Timberg


SECTION: A section; Pg. A16


LENGTH: 839 words


BEIJING - China reacted angrily on Tuesday to a congressional report that called two of its largest telecom firms threats to U.S. national security, heightening tension at a politically sensitive time for both countries.

The report warned that Huawei and ZTE could use their positions as major suppliers of telecommunications equipment to help the Chinese government expand its overseas spying operations, echoing a long-standing concern among U.S. intelligence officials.

Chinese authorities dismissed the charge as "groundless" and suggested it could undermine future cooperation between the world's two largest economies, which are both deeply entwined and increasingly competitive across a range of businesses.

"It is based on subjective speculation and false foundations," Shen Danyang, a spokesman for China's Commerce Department, said in a written statement. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said the report, released by the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Monday, reflected a "Cold War mentality as well as protectionism."

Hong Lei, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said, "We hope the U.S. Congress will put aside its prejudice, respect the facts and do more to promote China-U.S. trade relations, not the opposite."

Congressional concerns about the two companies stem from what the report characterizes as close relationships with China's Communist Party and its military, the People's Liberation Army.

U.S. intelligence officials and privacy security analysts have long worried about the potential of the companies to build what are called "back doors" into their systems, allowing secret access for spies. Back doors could be built into the hardware of chips, installed in software or slipped in later, through online updates, experts said.

"When you do the updates, when you do the patches, that's when you can do the interesting stuff," said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington. "If the People's Liberation Army asked Huawei to do them a favor, would Huawei be able to say, 'No'?"

The companies have vehemently rejected such allegations, saying that building back doors into their systems could destroy their multibillion-dollar businesses by undermining customer trust. At a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee last month, Huawei Senior Vice President Charles Ding said that such a move would be "corporate suicide."

Monday's report, coming amid a sensitive leadership transition in China and a month before elections in the United States, highlighted the complex relations between the two countries. Both President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have sought to portray themselves as tough on China. One Obama ad - released shortly after the congressional report - attempted to tie Romney to Huawei through his former investment firm, Bain Capital.

Tension is especially high over telecommunications, a major industry for both economies and one whose smooth functioning is essential to nearly every facet of modern society - including military and intelligence systems.

"This really is a strategic core technology and sector," said Benjamin A. Powell, a former general counsel to the director of national intelligence. "This is what runs us these days, these communications networks."

The report, which called on the U.S. government to block ZTE or Huawei from merging with U.S. firms, was sharply worded, but some information was classified and not released with the rest of the report.

The lack of such detail has left some experts wary of the government's complaints about Chinese companies. Doug Guthrie, dean of George Washington University's School of Business, said years of conversations with both U.S. officials and representatives for Huawei have convinced him that the American allegations are overblown.

"It's much easier to say that China is the source of all of our problems," Guthrie said. "In some ways, this is economic fear, pure and simple."

Security analysts, however, often point to China as the leading threat to U.S. cybersecurity, saying billions of dollars in intellectual property already has been stolen.

A team of security analysts studying Android phones several months back found a back door in a device made by ZTE. If the analysts typed in "ZTEX1609523," they gained complete control over the phone, allowing them to monitor text messages, listen to calls or install malicious programs.

"It certainly was something that was put in there intentionally," said Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike, one of the security analysts who discovered the back door, which he called "very unusual." "You could remain stealth on that device and do whatever you want."

The company quickly issued a fix after the discovery became public, but Alperovitch said he advises his clients not to buy either ZTE or Huawei products.

wanw@washpost.com

timbergc@washpost.com

Timberg reported from Washington. Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



547 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 7:38 PM EST


Factchecking the first presidential debate of 2012;
We have a baker's dozen of suspect claims by President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 3513 words


(This is an expanded version of material that originally appeared in the Oct. 4 print edition of The Washington Post.)

There they go again.

Both President Obama and former governor Mitt Romney tossed out a blizzard of statistics and facts, often of dubious origin. Here are some highlights from the first presidential debate of 2012, with thanks to the readers who tweeted suggestions to #FactCheckThis

"Governor Romney's central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut - on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts - that's another trillion dollars"

- President Obama

"I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut"

- Governor Romney

How can both facts be true? The $5 trillion figure comes from the fact that Romney has proposed to cut tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax and alternative minimum tax. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that would reduce tax revenue by nearly $500 billion in 2015, or about $5 trillion over 10 years

But Romney also has said he will make his plan "revenue neutral" by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, although he has not provided the details.

The Tax Policy Center has analyzed the specifics of Romney's plan thus far released and concluded that the numbers aren't there to make it revenue neutral.

In the debate, Romney countered that "six other studies" have found that not to be the case, but he's wrong about that. Those studies actually do not provide much evidence that Romney's proposal - as sketchy as it is - would be revenue neutral without making unrealistic assumptions.

Given the uncertainty, the Obama campaign has assumed the worst about Romney's plan - that it would mean higher taxes for middle-class Americans - even though, as Romney stated, there is no chance he would try to implement such a plan as president.

"I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan.... And the way we do it is $2.50 for every cut, we ask for $1 of additional revenue.... That's how the bipartisan commission that talked about how we should move forward suggested."

- Obama

Though Obama often claims that his deficit-reduction plan has the "balanced approach" of the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission proposal offered by the co-chairmen, the Simpson-Bowles plan is actually quite different. (The commission failed to reach a consensus.)

For instance, Simpson-Bowles envisioned $4 trillion in debt reduction over nine years; the president's plan would spread the cuts over 10 years. A good chunk of the savings from deficit reduction piles up in that last year. When the two plans are compared apples to apples, Simpson-Bowles yields about $6.6 trillion in deficit reduction - 50 percent more than Obama's plan. (For a detailed look at the Simpson-Bowles, here is a link to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

By Obama's math, you have nearly $3.8 trillion in spending cuts, compared to $1.5 trillion in tax increases (letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income Americans). That's how he claims $1 of tax increases for every $2.50 of spending cuts.

But virtually no serious budget analyst agreed with this 1:2.5 accounting. Obama's $4 trillion figure, for instance, includes counting some $1 trillion in cuts reached a year ago in budget negotiations with Congress. So no matter who is the president, the savings are already in the bank.

The Obama campaign notes that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the president's budget would reduce the deficit by $3.5 trillion over 10 years against "an alternative fiscal scenario;" otherwise, CBO says the president's budget increases deficits. The national debt, as a percentage of the gross domestic product, would rise from 73 percent to 76 percent in that period, for instance. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also pegs the administration's deficit reduction as $3.8 trillion, but says the ratio of spending cuts to tax increases is 1 to 1.

"It's important for us ... that we take some of the money that we're saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America."

- Obama

This is fantasy money. The administration is counting $848 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end.

In other words, by projecting war spending far in the future, the administration is able to claim credit for saving money it never intended to spend. And Obama would still be borrowing the money to "rebuild America" (Imagine someone borrowing $50,000 a year for college - and then declaring that they have an extra $500,000 to spend over the next decade once they graduate.)

This budget trick actually works both ways. The Bush administration never properly accounted for war spending, refusing to project costs in the future, which kept its deficit projections artificially low. Now that the wars are winding down, the Obama administration is happy to project costs far into the future, because it artificially inflates the potential deficit reduction. Funny how that works.

"On Medicare, for current retirees, he's cutting $716 billion from the program.... The idea of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to be able to balance the additional cost of Obamacare is, in my opinion, a mistake."

- Romney

Romney accused Obama of taking $716 billion from Medicare. This $700 billion figure comes from the difference over 10 years (2013-2022) between anticipated Medicare spending (what is known as "the baseline") and the changes that the law makes to reduce spending.

Under the health-care law, spending does not decrease in Medicare year after year; the reduction is from anticipated levels of spending in future years. In fact, the savings mostly are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries - who, as a result of the health-care law, ended up with new benefits for preventive care and prescription drugs. But Romney argued that was a "bad trade," arguing that in effect the reductions would affect beneficiaries, and the Medicare actuary also has raised concerns about whether the cuts to providers were sustainable.

While it is correct that anticipated savings from Medicare were used to help offset some of the anticipated costs of expanding health care for all Americans, it does not affect the Medicare trust fund. The Obama health-care law also raised Medicare payroll taxes by $318 billion over the new 10-year time frame, but only a third of that money is credited to the trust fund; the rest goes to general revenues.

Moreover, under the concept of the unified budget, money that is collected by the federal government for whatever purpose (such as Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes) is spent on whatever bills are coming due at that time. Social Security and Medicare will get a credit for taxes collected that are not immediately spent on Social Security, but those taxes are quickly devoted to other federal spending.

Indeed, the House Republican budget plan crafted by Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, retains virtually all of the Medicare "cuts" contained in the health-care law, but diverts them instead to his Medicare overhaul. Republicans argue that that is a more effective use of the savings.

"I also want to close those loopholes that are giving incentives for companies that are shipping jobs overseas."

- Obama

"You said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant."

- Romney

Romney said he was unaware of any provision that gives companies a tax deduction for moving operations overseas. But Obama is right; there is such a provision that allows companies to deduct such expenses - but it is not a specific loophole or incentive, as Obama indicated.

Here's how the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation described it:

"Under present law, there are no specific tax credits or disallowances of deductions solely for locating jobs in the United States or overseas.  Deductions generally are allowed for all ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred by the taxpayer during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business, which includes the relocation of business units."

Moreover, it is pretty small potatoes given the attention Democrats pay to it. The JCT estimated that ending the deduction for moving operations overseas would raise just $168 million over a decade.

In the federal government with an annual budget deficit of more than $1 trillion, that's what you call a rounding error.

(This item was updated with the specific JCT language.)

"And over the last two years, health care premiums have gone up - it's true - but they've gone up slower than any time in the last 50 years."

- Obama

Obama tried to attribute a 50-year decline in health costs to the health-care law, but much of it has not yet been implemented. Most economists say the slowdown is more likely because of the lousy economy.

"It's tempting to think that provider initiatives are truly denting costs, but it's hard for changes in provider behavior to influence costs before they occur," said a recent article in Modern Healthcare magazine. "Instead, the drop in healthcare cost growth is primarily attributable to the Great Recession's impact on employment, private health insurance, government revenues and budgets."

Meanwhile, Romney blamed a rise in insurance premiums on the health-care law. This is also overstated, since much of the health-care law has not been implemented yet.

"If I'm president, I will help create 12 million new jobs in this country with rising incomes."

- Romney

This is a reprise from his convention speech. And this sounds like a pretty bold statement, especially considering that only two presidents - Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - created more than 12 million jobs. Romney, in fact, says he can reach this same goal in just four years, though the policy paper issued by his campaign contains few details. It is mostly a collection of policy assertions, such as reducing debt, overhauling the tax code, fostering free trade and so forth.

But, in fact, the number is even less impressive than it sounds. This pledge amounts to an average of 250,000 jobs a month, a far cry from the 500,000 jobs a month that Romney once claimed would be created in a "normal recovery." In recent months, the economy has averaged about 150,000 jobs a month.

The Congressional Budget Office is required to consider the effects of the so-called "fiscal cliff" if a year-end budget deal is not reached, which many experts believe would push the country into a recession. But even with that caveat, the nonpartisan agency assumes 9.06 million jobs will be created between 2013 and 2017. (This is a revision downward; CBO had estimated 11 million in January.)

But Moody's Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.

In other words, this is a fairly safe bet by Romney, even if he has a somewhat fuzzy plan for action. We have often noted that presidents are often at the mercy - or are the beneficiary - of broad economic trends, and Romney's pledge appears to be an effort to take advantage of that.

"The problem is that because the voucher wouldn't necessarily keep up with health care inflation, it was estimated that this would cost the average senior about $6,000 a year. Now, in fairness, what Governor Romney has now said is he'll maintain traditional Medicare alongside it ."

- Obama

In the debate, Obama acknowledged that the GOP Medicare plan, authored by Romney running mate Paul Ryan, has been changed. But he still clung to an outdated estimate of an earlier version of the plan, claiming it will cost seniors an extra $6,000 a year. (He had previously earned Two Pinocchios for this claim.)

The problem is this dollar figure - usually expressed as $6,400 - is an estimate for an earlier version of Ryan's plan. He's since changed it significantly to address some of the loudest complaints. The new version of the plan includes the option for traditional Medicare, as well as a commitment that at least one health-care option would be fully covered by the government.

Indeed, the new plan is much more generous than the original version. The old plan had capped growth at the rate of inflation. Many experts believed that was too low and pushed more costs on beneficiaries.

In the updated Ryan plan, Medicare spending would be permitted to grow slightly faster than the nation's economy - in fact, at the same growth rate as Obama's budget for Medicare.

"I like the way we did it [health care] in Massachusetts.... What were some differences? We didn't raise taxes."

- Romney

This claim of no new taxes deserves some context, because the federal government has provided substantial help in paying for Romney's health-care law.

A June 2011 Boston Globe article said this about the cost of RomneyCare and how the state has paid for it:

"Over the five-year life of the new law, total cost has been $9 billion, with the federal government picking up nearly 64 percent of the cost, the state's share is more than 18 percent, and the remaining 18 percent split by hospitals and insurers, who pass it along to their customers, to pay into the Health Safety Net fund, which reimburses providers for treating the uninsured. The federal share consists of the usual 50 percent reimbursement for Medicaid, supplemented by stimulus money and additional funds awarded the state for its innovative program to subsidize insurance of the working poor."

So the federal government pays more for the Bay State's health-care program than the state itself does.

The Globe piece also noted that "there is no certainty the state can afford the program's cost indefinitely if the underlying costs of health care continue to soar."

The state has increased taxes to pay for its health-care plan since Romney left office. For instance, it raised taxes on cigarettes and implemented a one-time assessment totalling $50 million on hospitals and insurers. - Josh Hicks

"In one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world. Now, I like green energy as well, but that's about 50 years' worth of what oil and gas receives."

- Romney

The math does not add up for this statement that Romney directed at Obama.

The president's 2013 budget called for elimination of tax breaks for oil subsidies, which the White House estimated at $4 billion per year. Dividing $90 billion - the federal money that Romney claims went toward clean energy - by $4 billion in breaks for the oil industry amounts to 22.5 years, not 50 years.

It's also worth noting that the $90 billion was not "breaks," but a combination of loans, loan guarantees and grants through the stimulus program, and they were spread out over several years rather than one, as Romney claimed.

Furthermore, not all of the money went to the "green energy world." About $23 billion went toward "clean coal," energy-efficiency upgrades, updating the electricity grid and environmental clean-up, largely for old nuclear weapons sites. - Josh Hicks and Steven Mufson

"The president's reelected you'll see dramatic cuts to our military."

- Romney

Romney greatly oversimplifies a complex story here. In an effort to end the bitter impasse between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling, the Budget Control Act of 2011 cut spending by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years by setting new budget caps for "security" and "nonsecurity" discretionary spending.

"Security" spending included not just the Defense Department but also the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, foreign aid spending, intelligence and other areas. The goal was to allow some flexibility to avoid being locked into a specific number for defense spending.

The law also tasked a "supercommittee" with finding ways to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If the committee failed - which it did - then automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion also would be ordered in "security" and "nonsecurity" spending.

Now there is an impasse. An alternative plan passed the House in May on a party-line vote, with not a single Democrat voting for it. The bill would have halted the automatic cuts in defense spending for one year, while cutting in other areas. The Democratic-controlled Senate did not accept the bill. Democrats, by contrast, have proposed ending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy as a way to meet the deficit targets in the Budget Control Act, though no vote has been taken on a sequestration replacement plan.

Romney has not explained how he would end this stalemate.

"It puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea."

- Romney

What is Romney referring to as he almost begins to channel the "death panels" claim of Sarah Palin?

Beginning in 2014, the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, (made up of experts subject to Senate confirmation) is designed to help reduce the rate of growth in Medicare spending if it exceeds a certain target rate. The board would make recommendations to reduce costs.

Eventually, if the targets are not met, the board will submit a plan to the White House and Congress to achieve the necessary cuts. Congress could pass a different set of cuts or reject the IPAB recommendations with a three-fifths vote in the Senate.

In effect, the IPAB appears designed to mimic the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which was designed in the late 1980s by then Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.) with the backing of the Reagan administration. That commission was empowered to make politically difficult decisions of closing military bases, thus limiting the influence of lobbyists and in effect letting Congress off the hook of making the tough decisions themselves.

The health-care law explicitly says that the recommendations cannot lead to rationing of health care. Of course, "rationing" is in the eye of beholder, and one common complaint is that rationing is not defined. The law also limits recommendations that would change benefits, modify eligibility or increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing, such as deductibles, coinsurance and co-payments.

On the surface, the IPAB appears aimed at doing the same thing as the House Republican Medicare plan - reducing the runaway costs of Medicare, except on a faster track. (The GOP plan would not kick in until 2021, just a few years before the Medicare hospital fund begins to run dry.)

The dispute really centers on a philosophical divide between the parties. Democrats would rely on independent experts (such as doctors and consumer advocates) to recommend the cuts; Republicans would rely on the insurance marketplace to control costs.

"The approach that Governor Romney's talking about is the same sales pitch that was made in 2001 and 2003, and we ended up with the slowest job growth in 50 years, we ended up moving from surplus to deficits, and it all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

- Obama

Here, the president comes close to repeating a line that just this week earned him Three Pinocchios. In a new television ad, Obama said that tax cuts and deregulation led to the crisis. But in the debate he broadened his language, bringing in the impact of the Bush tax cuts on the deficit and not directly linking the policies ("it all culminated" versus "led to") to the financial crash.

With such careful pruning and adjusting of language, a politician can easily shed one or two Pinocchios.

But another part of Obama's statement is misleading. There's no doubt that George W. Bush owns an unimpressive record on job creation. But as we have previously demonstrated, Obama comes in either last, second-to-last or in the bottom half among presidents since the Great Depression, depending on which way you look at the numbers.

(As is our practice, we generally do not award Pinocchio ratings in these instant round-ups.)

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



548 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 7:00 PM EST


What Big Bird tells us about the 2012 campaign


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


LENGTH: 751 words


Twenty seven days before the 2012 presidential election, Big Bird is the biggest topic of debate in the political world.  

Even a month ago, the sentence above would have been much more likely to run in  the Onion than in mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post. And yet, here we are.

So, what does it tell us about the race and, more broadly, the state of our politics? Two things.

First, that we now live in a political age in which even the most outlandish moments in a campaign are quickly sliced and diced into shareable tidbits in hopes of reaching - and influencing - increasingly small slivers of the American electorate.  

Second, that every move each campaign makes is now national - and even global - due to the share-able power of the Internet and especially social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Let's take the first point, well, first.

The Obama campaign's decision to take Romney's "Big Bird" moment - can't believe we just typed that - and turn it into a TV ad is evidence of the belief the campaigns have that they can reach tiny segments of the electorate with very targeted messaging. When we first saw the ad, we immediately knew two things: 1) It would draw huge amounts of attention and 2) The Obama campaign was spending almost nothing on it.

Both turned out to be true. Big Bird has become fodder for cable chat shows, blogs and even the candidates on the campaign trail. (The best development from all of this is the Fire Me Elmo Twitter handle.)  And, the Big Bird ad is running only on national cable channels, meaning that most swing state voters won't see it and the Obama team won't spend any real money on it.

Asked to explain the decision to run the ad at all, Obama insiders note that it was very carefully targeted toward late-night TV shows whose viewers, presumably, are the sort of young(ish) people who the president badly needs engaged in the election in 27 days time. (Worth noting: The You Tube version of the Obama "Big Bird" ad has already racked up 1.6 million views.)

The gamble here was simple for Obama's campaign: They could make a very targeted ad buy with minimal cost that could pay dividends among a hard-to-motivate segment of young voters  - not to mention those voters who get their information about the election from non-traditional news sources. (Another potential target: Moms.)

Now, the second point. While the Obama team insists that most swing state voters never will see this ad, the Romney folks have done everything they can to highlight the fact that the President of the United States is running ads about Big Bird less than a month before the election. (Republicans leave out the fact that the ad is only running on national cable.)

Within minutes of the ad going on the air, Republicans were stuffing the Fix inbox, which is already overstuffed, with statements about how Obama's Big Bird commercial spoke to a lack of seriousness. 

"Four years ago, President Obama said that if you don't have a record to run on, 'you make a big election about small things,'" read a Romney statement on the ad. "With 23 million people struggling for work, incomes falling and gas prices soaring, Americans deserve more from their president."

The Obama defended the use of Big Bird, insisting that the ad was about much more than a beloved children's character."When Mitt Romney was given the opportunity to lay out his plans for bringing down the deficit- he gave the same answer he has given dozens of times on the campaign trail which was to cut funding for Big Bird," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "If that doesn't point out the lack of seriousness with his deficit reduction plan I am not sure what does.  The ad is an opportunity to highlight that."

What's clear is that both campaigns saw advantage in the Big Bird moment from the debate and seized on it.  That, of course, is nothing new in campaigns. And, we are plenty aware of the "paralysis by analysis" phenomenon. (Welcome to the Fix's whole life.)

But, the narrowness of the targeting from the Obama team and the speed with which the ad turned into a part of the national dialogue does strike us as fundamentally different in this campaign from those that have come before it.

It also seems that this whole Big Bird debate ultimately winds up being a loser for both of them.   Undecided voters tend to be the sort of people who believe politics is broken and that politicians focus on all the wrong things.  Could there possibly be any better evidence they are right than this Big Bird fiasco?


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



549 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 3:39 PM EST


Rand Paul: Romney wrong about Middle East


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 233 words


Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is campaigning with Mitt Romney this week, wrote an op-ed for CNN.com making clear that he doesn't support the Republican presidential nominee on every issue.  

Responding to Romney's recent speech on foreign policy, Paul wrote, "Romney chose to criticize President Obama for seeking to cut a bloated Defense Department and for not being bellicose enough in the Middle East, two assertions with which I cannot agree."

The senator argues against intervention in Syria; Romney argued for arming rebels. 

Paul endorsed Romney in June - before his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), had ended his own presidential bid. The elder Paul's campaign manager just went to work for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a sign that the libertarian-leaning Pauls are moving closer to the establishment. But with this op-ed, Rand Paul - seen by many as the future leader of his father's grass-roots movement - makes it clear that he won't always toe the party line. 

Within the GOP, Paul's foreign policy advocacy is already ruffling feathers. Paul's political action committee cut an ad attacking Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for voting against legislation that would cut aid to Egypt, Pakistan and Libya. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) crossed the aisle to publicly defend Manchin, saying the bill in question (which many Republicans opposed) would endanger the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



550 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 2:13 PM EST


Does Mitt Romney want to 'kill' Big Bird?;
The Obama campaign is fundraising on this claim, but is it true? Nope.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 771 words


"During the debates, Mitt Romney told America how he plans to pay for those tax cuts he wants to give America's wealthiest tax payers... by killing Big Bird! We've got to stop this guy. Please donate what you can."

- Obama campaign Web site

As part of a fundraising appeal, the Obama campaign has claimed that Mitt Romney wants to kill Big Bird in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. "Save Big Bird! Vote Democratic," the Obama Web site declares.

This appeal comes as the Obama campaign also launched a satirical ad highlighting Romney's mention of the Sesame Street character during the first presidential debate. "Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about, it's Sesame Street," the ad intones.

The fundraising appeal has a goal of $1 million, though as of early Wednesday, not a cent had been raised. Still, let's examine what Romney actually said to see if it is worthy of all of this attention.

The Facts

Below we have a clip of the debate exchange, which came after Romney detailed how he would try to cut spending to reduce the deficit. He first mentioned eliminating the president's health care law, which he called Obamacare. Then he listed another item.

"I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually, I like you, too," Romney said to debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the host of PBS's "NewsHour." "But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."

If Obama had been a bit more on his game during the debate, he could have noted that repealing Obamacare would add a bit to the deficit, at least in its first 10 years. He also could have noted that funding for Public Broadcasting amounts to a mere pittance of the federal budget - some $445 million out of $3.8 trillion. That's a little over 1/10,000 of the budget, or a mere rounding error.

Of course, deficit cutting has to start somewhere, but the former Massachusetts governor might have been more specific about what areas he wants to cut besides two items - the health care law and PBS funding - that excite the Republican base.

Similarly, it is just as silly for the Obama campaign to claim that Romney would use this minor bit of funding to help pay for tax cuts (After all, Romney denies his tax plan even is aimed at benefiting the wealthiest Americans.)

But in any case, Romney clearly said that he loves Big Bird, not that he wants to kill it. And even if he eliminated public funding for PBS, how would that affect Sesame Street, where Big Bird resides?

Not much. The 2009 financial disclosure from Sesame Workshop, the company that produces the program, shows that just $7.9 million came from government grants out of $130 million in total revenue, or about 6 percent.

The company also benefits from station program fees, some of which may come from federal dollars given to local PBS affiliates, which the company has suggested brings the percentage up to about 8 percent. The rest of the money comes from many corporate partners - as well as sales from those cute stuffed toys.

Here's what Sherrie Westin, Sesame Workshop executive vice president and chief marketing officer, told CNN:

"Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we're going to kill Big Bird - that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here."

The Pinocchio Test

How did "I love Big Bird" turn into "kill Big Bird"? Only through a spin machine going on hyper drive.

Romney may have been off base in suggesting PBS funding has much to do with the deficit, but that's no excuse for the Obama campaign to declare that means the demise of a popular children's character. According to the financials of Sesame Workshop, Big Bird should do just fine, with or without public funding.

Four Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios

Trail Mix: The Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez reports on the back-and-forth between presidential campaigns over the funding of PBS and the Sesame Street character Big Bird who is caught in the crosshairs.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



551 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 1:34 PM EST


Is Ann Romney saving her husband's campaign? She just might be.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 856 words


There's a bit of an Ann Romney boomlet happening in the presidential campaign at the moment.

The wannabe First Lady is guest-hosting "Good Morning America" today, less than 24 hours after penning a piece entitled "The Man I Know" for BlogHer and taking to Fox News Channel to defend her husband against attacks from the Obama campaign that he repeatedly lied in last week's presidential debate. "I mean, lied about what?" Ann Romney told FNC host Martha MacCallum. "This is something he's been saying all along."

This heightened profile for Ann Romney - as defender and humanizer (is that a word?) of her husband - comes hard on the heels of a story in Politico detailing her increased role in the strategy behind Mitt Romney's presidential bid.

Wrote Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei:

"She felt the Obama campaign had dishonestly made her husband out to be something he is not, and was eager to see a more forceful response, especially one that played up his humanity. She wanted to humanize her husband; play up his charity; and showcase how in politics, business and life, he has tried to do the right thing, even when it was not popular."

Her opinions appear to carry serious weight. Already stories have cropped up on the campaign trail about Mitt Romney revealing more of his (for lack of a better word) softer side on the stump, and during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday night, he told a touching story about how he remembers his late father, George, before every debate.

There's also smart politics behind a more prominent Ann Romney. In brand new Washington Post-ABC News polling, nearly six in 10 Americans now view her in a favorable light - a number that has soared in recent months even as those who regard her unfavorably has stagnated.

And those positive vibes toward Ann Romney extend to two critical subgroups: independents and women. Among independent voters, 58 percent see Ann Romney favorably, while just 28 percent regard her unfavorably.

Among women - a group that Mitt Romney has struggled with amid an onslaught of negative ads funded by the Obama campaign - Ann Romney is thought of favorably by 53 percent, while 32 percent view her unfavorably. That's a much healthier number than her husband's 46 percent favorable/52 percent unfavorable score among women.

Ann Romney cannot only serve as the single best surrogate in the "humanize Mitt" campaign, but she has credibility (and likability) with the two demographic groups he badly needs to make headway with over the next 27 days.

Add it all up and it means one simple thing: Expect to see lots (and lots) of Ann Romney between now and Nov. 6.

Romney says abortion isn't on his agenda: Romney confirmed that he won't be pushing the issue of abortion in an interview with the Des Moines Register's editorial board.

"There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," Romney said Tuesday.

Romney's sister said in August that her brother wouldn't be curbing abortion rights, despite his anti-abortion rights position.

Now that the candidate himself has said it, it will be interesting to see whether there is an uproar in the anti-abortion rights community. There are lots of people who care deeply about this issue, and Romney saying he's not going to press the issue could cause some problems.

Fixbits:

Romney is winning independents - by quite a bit.

Automated pollster SurveyUSA shows Nevada at Obama 47, Romney 46.

Obama's Big Bird ad gets four pinocchios and "pants on fire" from fact-checkers.

Jack Welch: Still not backing down.

NASCAR fans <3 Romney.

A majority of Americans, for the first time, say that the government shouldn't promote any set of values, versus promoting traditional values.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg weighs in on Obama's poll slippage.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has hired the former lead spokeswoman for NBC Universal - a hire that will have some chattering about 2016.

A new internal poll conducted for Rep. Martin Heinrich's (D-N.M.) Senate campaign shows him leading former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) 55 percent to 42 percent.

Ohio GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel, ala Paul Ryan, accuses a journalist of putting words in his mouth. "Somebody's gotta put words in your mouth because all you do is talk in circles," said the journalist, who works for the Youngstown Vindicator.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reprises the ad in which he shot the cap and trade bill.

Washington GOP governor candidate Rob McKenna dances to "Gangnam Style" - and actually doesn't do as badly as you might expect.

Must-reads:

"Election Truthers" - Richard Hasen, Slate

"Can Obama Resist the Forces of Gravity?" - Sean Trende, Real Clear Politics

"Democrats Learn to Love the Super PAC" - Josh Kraushaar, National Journal

"Obama and Romney campaign hard for Ohio's key votes" - Bill Turque and Jerry Markon, Washington Post

"Cold calculus of Maine's 3-way race" - Manu Raju, Politico

"WH race contested in far fewer states than in past" - Thomas Beaumont, AP

"One Man Guides the Fight Against Gay Marriage" - Eric Eckholm, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



552 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 2:10 AM EST


The post-debate campaign: What's changed and what hasn't


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1664 words


Many political observers have taken to dating this campaign in terms of "BD" ("before debate") and AD ("after debate"), believing that President Obama's lackluster performance in the first general election debate has fundamentally altered the course of the race.

And judging from new national polling from Pew and Gallup, there is some evidence to suggest that the race has shifted - with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney making up ground rapidly.

Before we draw too many conclusions about the state of the race, however, it's important to remember that 10 days ago, the political world was on death watch for the Romney campaign. Yes, things can change fast - and some dynamics of the contest clearly have. But there are other things that haven't changed too.

Our list of what's changed and what hasn't is below. What did we miss? The comments section awaits...

What's Changed

* Republicans are excited about Romney: Until the first presidential debate, the Romney vote was roughly 80 percent anti-Obama, 20 percent pro-Romney. The enthusiasm gains among Republicans in the post-debate Pew survey suggest that Republicans now feel as though they have a reason to vote for Romney, not just against Obama. That matters; people like to feel as they are casting an affirmative vote for their guy; John Kerry's loss in 2004 was due, at least in part, to his struggle to articulate a message beyond "I'm not George W. Bush".

* The national race is close: Put aside all of the arguments - and they are legion - about how, when and why these last national polls were conducted, and you are left with an obvious reality: At the national level, the Obama-Romney contest is a statistical dead heat. And that shouldn't be surprising. After a slew of national polls in mid-to-late September showed Obama with a high-single-digit/low-double-digit lead, the race had begun to tighten in other data on the eve of the debate last week. Given that almost every objective source saw the debate as a Romney victory, some movement nationally toward Romney makes sense.

* Romney is re-energized: Don't underestimate how hard it is to keep slogging through campaign stop after campaign stop with a smile on your face when you known things aren't going well for you. That was Romney's life from the moment Clint Eastwood (and his chair) took the stage at the Republican National Convention until last Wednesday night. But now the narrative has changed and, with it, Romney's demeanor and the coverage he is getting. Now we are seeing the softer side of Romney stories. The candidate is delivering forceful condemnations of the Obama foreign policy. Heck, he even looks like he is having fun speaking in the rain. 

* T he vice presidential debate could matter: We've long been skeptical that vice presidential debates (or vice presidential picks) matter much. (How many people make their mind up about the election because of the guy standing next to the guy?) But, politics, like sports, tends to work on momentum. And right now Romney has it - big time. If Rep. Paul Ryan delivers a winning performance at the VP debate Thursday night, the GOP enthusiasm/excitement will just continue to build. If, on the other hand, Vice President Biden - a decidedly underrated debater - puts in a strong performance, it could snuff out (or at least slow) the current Republican momentum.

What Hasn't Changed

* Obama's electoral vote edge: Let's assume that the national poll bump for Romney starts to trickle down into some critical swing states. (It should.) For the sake of argument, say that Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia all move toward Romney - and he winds up winning them as well as all of the more reliably Republican states leaning or solidly in his camp today. He still loses the electoral vote to Obama. We've written extensively about this often-overlooked reality in recent months but it's worth reiterating again: Even if Romney surges in a handful of swing states, his path to 270 electoral votes remains tough. For Romney to win at this point - assuming he can't put Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin play - he needs to all but sweep the remaining toss-up states.

* The Obama team isn't dumb: When times are good, the candidate and his/her campaign are geniuses. When times are bad, they are idiots. Neither characterization is accurate. What we know about Obama and his team is that they have ousted Hillary Clinton in a primary, won a sweeping electoral landslide in 2008 and, until last Wednesday, run an effective campaign that had put the incumbent very clearly in the driver's seat. All of the smart strategy that went into those accomplishments hasn't disappeared suddenly. Yes, Obama laid a major egg at the debate.  But to assume that the campaign has somehow forgotten what got them to where they are because of one bad debate performance is a major mistake.

* Money, money, money : Lost amid the post-debate coverage was the fact that Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $181 million in September, an eye-popping total that will almost certainly eclipse what Romney and the Republican National Committee collected over that same time period. What Obama's massive haul means is that the expectation that he will be badly outspent by Romney and his allies over the final days of the campaign could well be wrong. While we still expect the combination of Romney, RNC and outside conservative groups to outspend Obama, DNC and outside liberal groups on TV in the final 60 days, it won't be by a three- or even four-to-one margin. And that matters. Money talks, after all.

Obama launches Big Bird ad: Well this will get them talking.

The Obama campaign is up with a light-hearted new ad hitting Romney for wanting to end federal funding for public broadcasting. The ad features convicted corporate titans like Bernie Madoff and says, tongue in cheek, that Big Bird is the bird who oversaw it all.

"Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about; it's Sesame Street," the narrator says. The ad plays off a line Obama has used on the campaign trail juxtaposing Romney's plans for Wall Street versus Sesame Street.

No word on how much money is behind the ad, but the Obama campaign says it will run on national broadcast and cable.

Romney super PAC launches 'New Normal' ad: A new ad from the top super PAC supporting Romney hits Obama for lowering expectations about the country's economy and future.

The ad, titled "New Normal," features grim imagery and uses Obama's own words ("the private sector is doing fine") and campaign slogan ("Forward") against him.

The ad is part of a $6.3 million ad buy and will run Florida, Iowa, and Virginia for a week starting Tuesday.

Ryan jousts with local reporter: Ryan got into a testy exchange with a local TV reporter on Monday, telling the reporter he was "trying to stuff words in people's mouths."

After a series of questions about guns, Ryan talked about building community and creating opportunity in urban areas rather than passing new gun legislation. The reporter, from the ABC affiliate in Flint, Mich., then followed up by saying: "And you can do all that by cutting taxes? By - with a big tax cut?"

"Those are your words; not mine," Ryan said, before an aide ended the interview.

Ryan then remarked to the reporter: "That was kind of strange. You're trying to stuff words in peoples' mouths?" A brief exchange followed as aides covered the camera lense.

A Ryan spokesman told BuzzFeed that the reporter was already over his allotted time and that he "embarrassed" himself with the question.

Dem super PAC uses Joe Walsh against GOP colleagues: The Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC isn't just targeting freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.); it's using him against his fellow Illinois Republicans.

The super PAC is spending a combined $2.4 million on ads against three top targets in the Chicagoland area - Walsh, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) and Rep. Bob Dold (R-Ill.). 

The ad against Biggert and Dold features video of the always-passionate Walsh ranting at a town hall and notes that Biggert and Dold have voted with him on issues like contraception and mortgage relief.

"I am tired of hearing that crap," Walsh says in a clip that is repeated in the ad. The word "crap" is beeped out.

Another ad targeting Biggert specifically ties her to George W. Bush and the tea party.

Fixbits:

Ohio Democrats run an ad calling Romney a University of Michigan fan.

A poll from GOP-leaning pollster Susquehanna in Pennsylvania shows Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 45 percent.

A new WBUR-TV poll shows Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) leading Elizabeth Warren 48 percent to 45 percent.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) debated Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) on Monday. The recap is here.

A Mason-Dixon poll of the North Dakota Senate races shows Rep. Rick Berg (R) tied with former state attorney general Heidi Heitkamp (D).

Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.), who earned the endorsement of the National Rifle Association on Monday, took to Twitter on Sunday night to berate his opponent over a crossbow accident.

A GOP poll shows Republican Jonathan Paton leading former congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick (D) in Arizona.

Must-reads:

"6 keys to a Mitt Romney revival" - Maggie Haberman, Politico

"Bill Clinton to Hit Stump for House, Senate Democrats" - Kyle Trygstad, Roll Call

"Why Harry Reid Hates Mitt Romney" - John Stanton, BuzzFeed

"Across the electoral map, a mixed picture for candidates down the ballot" - Karen Tumulty, Washington Post

"Inside the campaign: The Romney rebellion" - Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, Politico

"U.S. Ties Legislator's Ex-Associate to Mob" - Alison Leigh Cowan, New York Times

"Security dwindled before deadly Libyan consulate attack" - Sharyl Attkisson, Margaret Brennan, CBS News


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



553 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 10, 2012 Wednesday 12:05 AM EST


Lindsey Graham crosses party lines to defend Joe Manchin against attacks from Rand Paul


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 822 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Obama holds slight lead over Romney among likely voters in Ohio, CNN poll shows

Who are the "undecided" voters? And what the heck are they waiting for?

DNC faces cash shortfall on eve of 2012 election

"Are you better off than you were 4 years ago" - 1 chart tries to answer that

The six most memorable moments in vice presidential debate history

New Obama ad stars Big Bird alongside Bernie Madoff

How the 1st debate changed the campaign (and what it didn't change)

Partisans line up behind their candidates as election nears

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* From Big Bird to Medicare: President Obama released a new TV ad Tuesday hitting Mitt Romney over his "47 percent" comments."Victims. Dependent. That's what Mitt Romney called forty-seven percent of Americans. Including people on Medicare. But what about his plan for you? Romney would replace guaranteed benefits with a voucher system," says the narrator of the ad, which is running in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. Meanwhile, Sesame Workshop requested Tuesday that the Obama campaign take down its ad referring to Big Bird.  

* Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is crossing party lines to defend Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) after Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) PAC released an new TV ad criticizing the West Virginia Democrat for voting to send U.S. aid to Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan. Paul has made an effort to block aid to those countries, but Manchin has opposed his effort. Graham told reporters Manchin made the right vote. Paul's PAC is also running a spot against Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). 

* Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) criticized Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) over $40 million in federal subsidies that businesses affiliated with her husband received for low-income housing developments. McCaskill's campaign said the funds posed no conflict of interest. There is no evidence the senator personally steered money to her husband's businesses. Meanwhile, Akin placed a new $56,000 ad buy, according to a Democratic strategist tracking buys. That's a figure suggesting the embattled congressman may not have a lot of money to spend. 

* Ohio Republican Senate nominee Josh Mandel raised $4.5 million during the third quarter, his best three-month haul yet. He did not immediately release his cash on hand total. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Romney had met one of the former Navy SEALS killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last month, he said at a campaign event on Tuesday. Romney arrived at  a Christmas party a couple of years back, and before realizing he was at the wrong gathering, met some guests, including Glen Doherty, the former SEAL.

* Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) leads former congresswoman Heather Wilson 51 percent to 39 percent according to a new Democratic poll conducted for his campaign. A third party candidate receives 8 percent of the vote in the survey, which was conducted by SBA Strategies from Oct. 4-7. 

* Two affiliated GOP outside groups - the American Action Network and the Congressional Leadership Fund - have reserved $7.5 million worth of airtime in eight key House races. AAN is set to spend $1 million in retiring Rep. Tim Johnson's (R-Ill.) district, $1.8 million on Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), $600,000 against Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), $1.3 million on Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) and $90,000 on Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.). CLF, meanwhile, has reserved $1.4 million in the race between Reps. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Jim Renacci (R), $750,000 for Rep. Quico Canseco (R-Texas) and $500,000 against Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.). The groups have now reserved $12.2 million in airtime, including in some markets where they could spend it on multiple races. The group previously reserved $1.1 million worth of airtime for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) and $250,000 worth of airtime against Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.). AAN is a 501c4 center-right issue advocacy organization. CLF is the sister organization and is a super PAC.

* The National Republican Congressional Committee says it has voluntarily pulled an ad hitting Democrat Julian Schreibman. The ad attacked Schreibman's work as a defense attorney. Schreibman is challenging Rep. Chris Gibson (R) in New York's 19th District.

* The Republican Governors Association released a new TV ad tying West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) to Obama on coal. The RGA also launched a new ad criticizing New Hampshire Democratic gubernatorial nominee Maggie Hassan for pushing for higher taxes. 

THE FIX MIX:

What's next?

With Aaron Blake

Updated at 8:02 p.m.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



554 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Regional Edition


The Snuffleupagus in the room


BYLINE: Dana Milbank


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 786 words


The Obama campaign's new ad ruffles my feathers.

It's not the message per se. The Big Bird spot fairly points out that Mitt Romney seems more interested in cracking down on "Sesame Street" than on Wall Street. The problem is President Obama has, to mix animal metaphors, taken the bait - and he's pursuing a red herring.

Big Bird is not the problem. The problem is Snuffleupagus.

The threat presented by Romney's budget is not in the few cuts he has specified but in the vastly larger amount of unseen cuts he has yet to identify.

At the Denver debate, Romney said he would eliminate Obamacare (doing so would actually increase the budget deficit, because of related tax hikes) and the public-broadcasting subsidy, which is $445 million a year - or little more than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of federal spending. But Romney proposes to cut federal spending by trillions of dollars - more than $5 trillion over the next decade, assuming he follows the sort of blueprint laid out by his running mate, Paul Ryan. That threatens much more than Muppets and monsters. Human lives are at stake.

As if to remind us of this, Rep. Darrell Issa, the indefatigable Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has called a hearing for noon Wednesday even though Congress is in a weeks-long recess. The emergency cause for the hearing? Probing "The Security Failures of Benghazi" - lapses in diplomatic security that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

The purpose of the pre-election hearing, presumably, is to embarrass the administration for inadequate diplomatic security. But Issa seems unaware of the irony that diplomatic security is inadequate partly because of budget cuts forced by his fellow Republicans in Congress.

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program - well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration's request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans' proposed cuts to her department would be "detrimental to America's national security" - a charge Republicans rejected.

Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan's budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

The Romney campaign argues that such extrapolations are unfair, because Romney and Ryan haven't specified which programs they would cut and by how much. And that's the problem: The danger in Romney's plan is not in the few cuts he has detailed but in the many he has not.

If Romney follows through on the tax cuts he has endorsed, increases defense spending by $2.1 trillion over a decade as promised and maintains Social Security and Medicare as they are for those 55 and older, he'd need to cut everything else government does by nearly a third - or more than $200 billion - in 2016. By 2022, the liberal Center for American Progress calculates, such government functions, including the State Department, would be cut by 53 percent. The $445 million Romney saves by axing PBS will get him less than half of 1 percent of the way toward the budget cuts he would need to make by 2016.

Obama is making a mistake in allowing the discussion to be about Big Bird, which he continued to do on Monday, telling supporters that "Elmo has been seen in a white Suburban" (apparently a botched reference to O.J. Simpson's white Bronco). His new campaign ad, likewise, has a cute punch line: "Mitt Romney, taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest."

Obama would do better to focus on Big Bird's elephantine friend Aloysius Snuffleupagus. For years, Big Bird tried to convince the skeptical grown-ups on "Sesame Street" that his "imaginary" friend was real. Finally, after concern that the grown-ups' dismissal of Big Bird's truthful claim might dissuade children from reporting sexual abuse, "Sesame Street's" producers made Snuffy visible to the grown-ups.

In the presidential campaign, Big Bird is a distraction from Romney's real cuts, which he is not yet allowing Americans to see. Obama should be drawing attention to the elephant in the room.

danamilbank@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



555 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition


BYLINE: - Natalie Jennings;Nia-Malika Henderson


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 169 words


After TV ad, Sesame Workshop affirms its nonpartisan mission

Just hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad mocking Mitt Romney for saying he will cut funding for PBS and caustically linking Big Bird to Wall Street villains, Sesame Workshop posted this statement on its Web site:

"Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down."

In the Democrats' new ad, the eight-foot-tall bird towers over Wall Street while an announcer says: "Big, yellow, a menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about. It's Sesame Street. Mitt Romney. Taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest."

A Romney spokesman addressed the ad, saying it's "troubling that the president's message, the president's focus 28 days out from Election Day is Big Bird."

- Natalie Jennings and Nia-Malika Henderson


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



556 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 10, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition


China dismisses U.S. security fears


BYLINE: William Wan;Craig Timberg


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A16


LENGTH: 835 words


DATELINE: BEIJING


BEIJING - China reacted angrily on Tuesday to a congressional report that called two of its largest telecom firms threats to U.S. national security, heightening tension at a politically sensitive time for both countries.

The report warned that Huawei and ZTE could use their positions as major suppliers of telecommunications equipment to help the Chinese government expand its overseas spying operations, echoing a long-standing concern among U.S. intelligence officials.

Chinese authorities dismissed the charge as "groundless" and suggested it could undermine future cooperation between the world's two largest economies, which are both deeply entwined and increasingly competitive across a range of businesses.

"It is based on subjective speculation and false foundations," Shen Danyang, a spokesman for China's Commerce Department, said in a written statement. The state-run Xinhua News Agency said the report, released by the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Monday, reflected a "Cold War mentality as well as protectionism."

Hong Lei, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, said, "We hope the U.S. Congress will put aside its prejudice, respect the facts and do more to promote China-U.S. trade relations, not the opposite."

Congressional concerns about the two companies stem from what the report characterizes as close relationships with China's Communist Party and its military, the People's Liberation Army.

U.S. intelligence officials and privacy security analysts have long worried about the potential of the companies to build what are called "back doors" into their systems, allowing secret access for spies. Back doors could be built into the hardware of chips, installed in software or slipped in later, through online updates, experts said.

"When you do the updates, when you do the patches, that's when you can do the interesting stuff," said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington. "If the People's Liberation Army asked Huawei to do them a favor, would Huawei be able to say, 'No'?"

The companies have vehemently rejected such allegations, saying that building back doors into their systems could destroy their multibillion-dollar businesses by undermining customer trust. At a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee last month, Huawei Senior Vice President Charles Ding said that such a move would be "corporate suicide."

Monday's report, coming amid a sensitive leadership transition in China and a month before elections in the United States, highlighted the complex relations between the two countries. Both President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have sought to portray themselves as tough on China. One Obama ad - released shortly after the congressional report - attempted to tie Romney to Huawei through his former investment firm, Bain Capital.

Tension is especially high over telecommunications, a major industry for both economies and one whose smooth functioning is essential to nearly every facet of modern society - including military and intelligence systems.

"This really is a strategic core technology and sector," said Benjamin A. Powell, a former general counsel to the director of national intelligence. "This is what runs us these days, these communications networks."

The report, which called on the U.S. government to block ZTE or Huawei from merging with U.S. firms, was sharply worded, but some information was classified and not released with the rest of the report.

The lack of such detail has left some experts wary of the government's complaints about Chinese companies. Doug Guthrie, dean of George Washington University's School of Business, said years of conversations with both U.S. officials and representatives for Huawei have convinced him that the American allegations are overblown.

"It's much easier to say that China is the source of all of our problems," Guthrie said. "In some ways, this is economic fear, pure and simple."

Security analysts, however, often point to China as the leading threat to U.S. cybersecurity, saying billions of dollars in intellectual property already has been stolen.

A team of security analysts studying Android phones several months back found a back door in a device made by ZTE. If the analysts typed in "ZTEX1609523," they gained complete control over the phone, allowing them to monitor text messages, listen to calls or install malicious programs.

"It certainly was something that was put in there intentionally," said Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike, one of the security analysts who discovered the back door, which he called "very unusual." "You could remain stealth on that device and do whatever you want."

The company quickly issued a fix after the discovery became public, but Alperovitch said he advises his clients not to buy either ZTE or Huawei products.

wanw@washpost.com

timbergc@washpost.com

Timberg reported from Washington. Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



557 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 9, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


With New Vigor, Romney Resets Ohio Campaign


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG; Jeff Zeleny reported from Columbus, and Jim Rutenberg from New York.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1269 words


COLUMBUS, Ohio -- If one place is emerging as a test of Mitt Romney's ability to capitalize on a new dynamic in the presidential race, it is Ohio, where he is intensifying his advertising, deploying more troops and spending four of the next five days.

Ohio, whose 18 electoral votes are critical to Mr. Romney's candidacy, has bedeviled him like no other battleground state. His prospects were so shaky two weeks ago that his advisers openly discussed the narrow path to winning the necessary 270 electoral votes without Ohio, which every Republican president in the nation's history has carried.

But as the race for the White House takes on a new air of volatility after President Obama's off-kilter debate performance last week -- a poll from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center on Monday suggested that Mr. Romney had wiped out the president's lead among voters nationally -- Mr. Romney is displaying new vigor in his fight for Ohio. The state, along with Florida, Iowa and Virginia, is now at the heart of his strategy for the remaining 28 days of the campaign.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are both visiting Ohio on Tuesday, the final day of voter registration here, but Mr. Romney is sticking around for one of his most intensive bursts of campaigning yet. His increased presence is a response to pleas from state Republican leaders to invest more time and attention in the regions where he needs to turn out voters.

''Republicans who were concerned about some of the poll numbers now have a higher degree of enthusiasm,'' said Senator Rob Portman, the chairman of Mr. Romney's campaign here. ''We've got a great opportunity to keep the momentum going.''

For the first time, Mr. Romney is personally making his case in a new television ad, saying, ''Ohio families can't afford four more years like the last four.'' The message, while hardly novel, is welcome among Republicans who have watched with frustration as Mr. Obama's campaign has dominated airwaves for weeks with a tailor-made operation in Ohio.

Mr. Romney's problems here have included the Obama campaign's success at defining him to many voters over the summer as an out-of-touch corporate raider, as well as a state economy that has been more vibrant than the country's over all. With both the state and national unemployment rates now below 8 percent, Mr. Romney may have less opportunity than he did earlier this year to convince voters when he asks them in his new ad, ''The question Ohio families are asking is 'Who can bring back the jobs?' ''

Several Republican officials, asked why Mr. Romney has been lagging well behind Mr. Obama, responded it was not because Mr. Romney was not selling here, but rather that his campaign had not been selling him well.

The president's campaign has overwhelmed Mr. Romney until now in television advertising. In Youngstown, Mr. Romney and his allied groups ran virtually no advertisements through much of September, as Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies showed their ads more than 1,100 times, according to data compiled by the media monitoring firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

Mr. Romney has now increased his advertising in smaller markets across the state, including Youngstown, Zanesville and Lima. He is scheduled to travel the state on Tuesday and Wednesday with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at his side, hoping to keep enthusiasm high among Republicans who have been showing up in greater numbers at volunteer centers across the state this week.

If the Romney campaign is to have a lasting resurgence in the four weeks until Election Day, his advisers say it must come in states like Ohio. But the presidential debate in Denver last week, where Mr. Romney commanded the stage, has provided him an opportunity to reset the contest.

The president's advisers acknowledged in interviews that Mr. Romney was almost certain to get a ''second look'' from some Republican-leaning independent voters who had not yet embraced him despite misgivings about Mr. Obama, including in reliably Republican rural areas where Mr. Romney needs a large turnout.

A Republican-leaning voter in the Cincinnati area who was ambivalent about Mr. Romney before the debate said on Monday that she was now solidly on board.

''I was never really sure where he stood or who he was,'' said the voter, Sara Campbell, 36, a mother of three. ''To me, you have to be a strong leader in not only what you're deciding, but also the way you come across.''

She added: ''When he was right up against Obama, it really showed that he was strong, that he stands behind his convictions. And that was something that was important for me to see.''

Cathy Appel, 53, an independent voter from suburban Columbus, said she believed that Mr. Romney did a better job in the debate. But she said she was still leaning toward Mr. Obama because of Mr. Romney's positions on women's issues. ''Mitt Romney came across much more confidently than I would have thought,'' said Ms. Appel, a retired government worker. ''But I can't imagine selling myself down the river.''

Republican strategists in Ohio said Mr. Romney needed to increase his support among women, particularly in suburban areas. Requests from state Republicans for a television commercial featuring Ann Romney have not yet been approved by the campaign headquarters in Boston.

But Mr. Romney is now trying to focus his appeal to specific voters in each corner of Ohio, with a focus on coal production in the southeast, conservative values in the southwest and a bipartisan pitch in the suburbs of Cleveland. In that area, George V. Voinovich, a former senator and governor, declares in a new radio ad, ''Mitt Romney will bring us together and end the divisiveness we have seen in Washington.''

The first polls since the debate last week suggest that enthusiasm and optimism are increasing among Republicans even as they send mixed signals about voter preferences in what has become a more fluid campaign.

The Pew Research poll on Monday found that Mr. Romney is backed by 49 percent of likely voters nationwide and that Mr. Obama is supported by 45 percent, which is within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for each candidate. But a Gallup survey of registered voters showed Monday that Mr. Obama is the choice of 50 percent and Mr. Romney of 45 percent.

Advisers to both campaigns said they needed to wait for more focus groups and polls to determine the state of the race. The president's aides argued that, at best, Mr. Obama's uneven debate performance hastened a tightening in polls that they said was going to happen this fall.

''We've always prepared for a close and competitive election, and we continue to,'' Jim Messina, the president's campaign manager, said in an interview.

The president continues to have more paths to reaching 270 electoral votes.

To win, Mr. Romney needs what some aides to Mr. Obama have been calling ''an inside straight,'' including winning Florida, Ohio, Virginia and either Colorado, Iowa or Nevada. But it is not a prospect that Democrats rule out, which is why Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Ohio State University on Tuesday.

The president has spent considerable time on college campuses this fall, which was the subject of frustration on a recent morning in a conversation among party activists at a Republican Victory Center in Delaware County, just north of Columbus. Three volunteers, who were upbeat over last week's debate, asked a reporter if Mr. Romney ever visited college campuses.

''He needs to campaign much harder,'' said Jeff Edmister, 51, a Republican from nearby Westerville. ''But thank goodness he's starting to kick it up.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/politics/with-new-vigor-mitt-romney-intensifies-ohio-campaign.html


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney is spending several days in Ohio, a state every Republican president has carried. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A13)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



558 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


Oct. 8: A Great Poll for Romney, in Perspective


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1460 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney gained further ground in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Monday, but much of the increase was because of a single poll.


Mitt Romney gained further ground in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Monday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 25.2 percent from 21.6 percent on Sunday.

The change represents a continuation of the recent trend: Mr. Romney's chances were down to just 13.9 percent immediately in advance of last week's debate in Denver. He has nearly doubled his chances since then.

But the gains that he made on Monday in particular were all because of a single poll.

We'll talk about that poll -- a Pew Research poll that gave Mr. Romney a 4-point lead among likely voters -- in a moment. But let's first consider the day's worth of polling without it, which was pretty mixed for Mr. Romney.

The most unfavorable numbers for Mr. Romney came in the national tracking polls published by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports. Both showed the race trending slightly toward President Obama, who increased his lead from 3 points to 5 points in the Gallup poll, and pulled into a tie after having trailed by 2 points in the Rasmussen survey.

In both cases, the numbers looked more like pre-debate data than the stronger numbers that Mr. Romney has been receiving since then. On average between the Democratic convention and the debate, the Rasmussen poll showed Mr. Obama with a 0.7-point lead (the Rasmussen poll is Republican-leaning relative to the consensus), while the Gallup poll had Mr. Obama ahead by an average of 3.4 points.

A third national tracking poll, an online tracking poll published by the RAND Corporation, showed essentially no change from Sunday. All of this seemed to be consistent with a story in which Mr. Romney's debate bounce was receding some. (A fourth tracking poll, from Ipsos, had not been published as of the time we ran our forecast on Monday.)

The swing state polls published on Monday might best be described as being OK for Mr. Obama. He led in polls of Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and in two polls of Michigan. In all cases, Mr. Obama's lead was small. However, this particular group of pollsters had shown reasonably unfavorable numbers for Mr. Obama in the same states before. Three of the polls actually moved toward Mr. Obama from the numbers that the same polling firms had published before the debates.

There are a few polls that I've left out of the discussion here -- a George Washington University survey for Politico, for example, showed just a 1-point lead for Mr. Obama, even though most of its interviews were conducted before the debate. That was a strong poll for Mr. Romney.

But were it not for the Pew poll, our forecast would have been unchanged from Monday, with Mr. Romney's chances holding at 21.6 percent.

The Pew poll, however, may well be the single best polling result that Mr. Romney has seen all year. It comes from a strong polling firm, and had a reasonably large sample size. Just as important is the trendline. Pew's polls have been Democratic-leaning relative to the consensus this year; its last poll, for instance, had Mr. Obama 8 points ahead among likely voters. So this represents a very sharp reversal.

One line of complaint about the poll has come from Democrats, who noted that the poll showed more Republicans than Democrats in its sample -- unlike most other recent surveys.

I feel the same way about this critique that I do when it comes from Republicans -- which is to say I don't think very much of it. As The Washington Post's Jon Cohen notes, party identification is fluid rather than fixed, and can change in reaction to political and news events. If voters are feeling better about Mr. Romney after the debates, they might also be inclined to identify themselves to pollsters as Republicans.

It is probably also the case that Republicans won't actually have a 5-point party identification advantage in the exit poll on Election Day. But it isn't the pollster's job to project what will happen on Nov. 6. (That's my job, instead!) Rather, the pollster's job is to take the most accurate snapshot of the electorate at the time the poll is conducted. Note that the Rasmussen Reports polls, which (improperly, in my view) adjust for party identification, show very little bounce for Mr. Romney. The party-identification adjustment is causing them to miss the story of the election -- just as they were largely missing the story of Mr. Obama's bounce following his convention.

There are two smarter questions to ask about the Pew poll. First, is it really likely that Mr. Romney leads the race by 4 points right now? The consensus of the evidence, particularly the national tracking polls, would suggest otherwise. Instead, the forecast model's conclusion is that the whole of the data is still consistent with a very narrow lead for Mr. Obama, albeit one that is considerably diminished since Denver.

It might be granted that the situation is more ambiguous than usual right now. But our forecast model looks at literally all of the polls; it estimates Mr. Romney's post-debate bounce as being 2.5 percentage points, not quite enough to erase Mr. Obama's pre-debate advantage.

The other valid line of inquiry concerns the timing of the poll. The Pew poll was conducted from Thursday through Sunday, although more of the interviews were conducted in the earlier part of that period. There's nothing in the poll that really refutes the story that Mr. Romney initially received a very large bounce after the debate (perhaps somewhere on the order of 4 or 5 points, if not quite as large as Pew shows it), which has since faded some between the news cycle turning over and the favorable jobs report on Friday.

The evidence that Mr. Romney's bounce is receding some is only modestly strong -- as opposed to the evidence that he got a significant bounce in the first place, which is very strong. Still, the order in which polls are published does not exactly match the order in which they were actually conducted -- and at turning points in the race, these details can make a difference.

The last thing to consider is that the fundamentals of the race aren't consistent with a 4-point lead for Mr. Romney. Instead, the most recent economic numbers, and Mr. Obama's approval ratings, would seem to point to an election in which he is the slight favorite. We don't use approval ratings in our forecast, but we do use the economic data, and both the monthly payrolls report and the broader FiveThirtyEight economic index would point toward an election in which Mr. Obama is favored in the popular vote by around 2.5 percentage points.

There is a fair amount of uncertainty in this calculation: models that claim to achieve exceptionally precise results based on economic data alone have not always lived up to their billing -- so a forecast based on the economic index alone would have Mr. Obama as only a 60 or 65 percent favorite, hardly a sure thing. (In Mr. Obama's case, much of the downside risk would come from the potential for a poor Democratic turnout.) And our forecast model weights the economic factors less and less as time goes on.

Still, the economic component of the model still has some influence on the model (it accounts for about 25 percent of the forecast for the time being). Just as the economic component was causing the model to adjust Mr. Obama's numbers downward during the height of his convention bounce, the same consideration will help Mr. Obama slightly if he starts to see more results like the Pew poll.

This technique has produced a very stable forecast over the whole of the year: since we began to publish the model in the spring, the projected Nov. 6 result has varied only between a 1.6-point win for Mr. Obama in the national popular vote and a 4.3-point edge.

That's not to say the model weights all the polls equally: high-quality national polls have an especially big influence on the trendlines that we estimate. Hence, Mr. Romney's odds of winning the Electoral College increased by more than 3 percent on the basis of the Pew poll alone; I doubt that any other individual poll has had as much influence on the forecast.

But it's one thing to give a poll a lot of weight, and another to become so enthralled with it that you dismiss all other evidence. If you can trust yourself to take the polls in stride, then I would encourage you to do so. If your impression of the race is changing radically every few minutes, however, then you're best off looking at the forecasts and projections that we and ourcompetitors publish, along with Vegas betting lines and prediction markets.

All of these methods have slightly different ways of accounting for new information, but they do involve people who are risking either money or reputation to get it right, and who have systematic ways to weigh the evidence rather than doing so on an ad hoc basis.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



559 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


A Tax Too High


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 1868 words



HIGHLIGHT: Wall Street doesn't exactly love the idea of higher taxes, but a proposal in France looks much scarier than anything being discussed here. | A report on the global banking industry suggests that some lenders may be forced to put themselves up for sale. | Ireland is close to passing a law that could help struggling homeowners. | Max W. Berger, the plaintiffs lawyer, isn't celebrating his six major securities class-action settlements.


A Tax Too High  | 
Wall Street doesn't exactly love the idea of higher taxes. But a proposal in France looks much scarier than anything being discussed in this country: a 75 percent marginal tax rate on all income over $1.3 million, with capital gains taxes as high as 60 percent.

This was not what French executives were expecting when they signed a petition asking for higher taxes (yes, higher taxes), and now many are "crying foul," writes Andrew Ross Sorkin in the DealBook column. "The idea of soaking the rich is often a popular one. But if there is lesson in the French experience, despite the economic models, it is that there are limits."

Another Gloomy Forecast for Banks  |  It's already bad, and it could get worse. So predicts the latest report on the global banking industry, this one by McKinsey & Company. In it, the consulting firm calls for cost-cutting and changes in culture. It also suggests that some lenders may be forced to put themselves up for sale. "You will see significant consolidation, particularly among banks with less diversified income streams," Toos Daruvala, a McKinsey director and co-author of the report, told Reuters.

The sluggish economy doesn't help. The International Monetary Fund is lowering its forecast for global economic growth to 3.3 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2013, predicting a 15 percent chance of a recession in the United States next year. The I.M.F.'s Global Financial Stability report is due out this evening.

With the economy potentially slowing, regulators are paying close attention to the banks' capital levels. But the banks are not necessarily happy. Some are clashing with the Federal Reserve over its stress tests, demanding more information on the Fed's calculations, The Wall Street Journal reports. Sallie Krawcheck, former head of Bank of America's wealth management division, said in a Twitter message on Monday that the discord was "not a bad thing," adding that she would "worry if they agree."

Ireland's Bold Move  |  Ireland is going where no country has gone before. The government is close to passing a law that could encourage banks to reduce the amount that borrowers owe on their mortgages, "a step that no major country has been willing to take on a broad scale," DealBook's Peter Eavis reports. "The initiative, which would lower a borrower's monthly payment, could prevent a tide of foreclosures, an uncertainty that has been hanging over the Irish housing market for years." In other words, it could help Ireland's troubled economy.

Billion-Dollar Fraud Fighter  |  Max W. Berger, the plaintiffs lawyer, won six major securities class-action settlements, including the recent $2.43 billion deal with Bank of America, DealBook's Peter Lattman reports. But Mr. Berger, of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, is not celebrating." It makes me sad that in all of these scandals, no matter how good a job we do of getting results and inflicting pain, the government doesn't seem to follow suit, and nobody learns, and it's business as usual," Mr. Berger laments.

It's not just about the billion-dollar cases. DealBook's Peter J. Henning, the White Collar Watch columnist, highlights a recent case in which the Justice Department accused two brokers of secretly adding pennies to the cost of securities trades to generate $18.7 million in gains. Mr. Henning writes that "conduct involving relatively small amounts can add up to millions of dollars if allowed to go on long enough."

Buyouts Lift Carlyle  | 
The Carlyle Group's bread-and-butter private equity business generated most of the growth among its funds in the third quarter. The value of the firm's leveraged buyout funds increased about 5 percent, while its global market strategies platform rose 2 percent.

Business has been good to David M. Rubenstein, the firm's co-founder, who appeared on CBS News on Monday to talk about the Giving Pledge, the effort by Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage philanthropy.

On the Agenda  |  A court in Ghana is set to rule Tuesday on Argentina's battle with Elliott Management, whose affiliate recently seized an Argentine naval ship. Procter & Gamble has an annual shareholder meeting Tuesday after the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman was said to call for the chief executive to resign. The jury trial begins Tuesday in the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against the co-founder of the Reserve Primary money market fund, which "broke the buck" in the financial crisis. Alcoa and Chevron report earnings after the market closes. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is visiting Greece. Sallie Krawcheck is on Bloomberg TV at 10 a.m.
Aaron Levie, the C.E.O. of Box, is on CNBC at 1:30 p.m. and Bloomberg TV at 6 p.m. Glenn Hutchins, co-chief executive of Silver Lake, is on CNBC at 4:10 p.m.

Aerospace Deal on the Rocks  |  The European aerospace companies EADS and BAE, which face an Oct. 10 deadline to submit a merger plan, are moving "toward filing an extension," Bloomberg News reports. Negotiations among leaders in Britain, France and Germany became more heated as Britain opposed a plan for France to increase its stake in the combined company, Reuters reports. And there may be further trouble from shareholders, as Invesco, the biggest investor in BAE, said it had "significant reservations" about the deal.

Silicon Valley's Reality Show  |  A new trailer for Bravo's "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," features lots of partying and insightful lines like "geeks are definitely the new rock stars."

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Barclays Picks Up ING Unit in Britain  |  Barclays said it was buying the mortgages and deposits of ING Direct in Britain, in a transaction that leaves the Dutch firm with a $415 million after-tax loss. WALL STREET JOURNAL | REUTERS

Auction Begins for Anschutz Entertainment  |  The Anschutz Entertainment Group is expected to "draw bids in the $10 billion range," Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. REUTERS

BP's Russian Partners Look to Sell Stake in Joint Venture  |  The move by the Russian billionaires sets up a "race" with BP to exit TNK-BP first, Reuters writes. REUTERS

BP to Sell Texas City Refinery to Marathon Petroleum  |  BP said that it would sell its Texas City refinery and other assets to Marathon Petroleum for $2.5 billion, as the British oil company nearly finishes up an aggressive plan to pare back assets. DealBook »

Principal Financial to Buy AFP Cuprum of Chile for $1.5 Billion  | 
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Russian Consumer Lender Says It May Sell Itself  |  Tinkoff Credit Systems is considering an I.P.O., but it also said it could put itself up for sale to a company like Google, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

TPC Group Receives Higher Offer  |  The chemicals maker TPC Group said it had received a buyout offer of $721 million from Innospec, beating an earlier offer from two private equity firms, Reuters reports. REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Julius Baer to Cut 1,000 Jobs After Deal for Bank of America Unit  |  The Swiss bank plans to eliminate up to 18 percent of its work force to cut costs after it struck a deal in August with Bank of America to buy the American bank's private banking operations outside the United States and Japan. DealBook »

Wal-Mart Partners With American Express for Prepaid Card  |  American Express, which previously had been focused on high-end consumers, is offering a prepaid card with Wal-Mart Stores that is being pitched as "an option for people turned off by bank fees," The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Goldman Sachs Staff Turns Against Obama  |  The firm's employees are now "top sources of money" for Mitt Romney and the Republican party, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ex-S.E.C. Official Heads to Goldman Asset Management  |  Andrew Donohue, a former head of the investment management division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is becoming the deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Reuters reports. REUTERS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Allied World Assurance Buys Stake in MatlinPatterson  |  Along with the stake, Allied World will invest $500 million in MatlinPatterson's funds, a pattern seen in recent acquisitions by other institutional investors. DealBook »

Black's Latest Purchase  |  The chief executive of Apollo Global Management, Leon Black, is buying Phaidon Press, the art book publisher, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Black was identified earlier this year as the buyer who paid almost $120 million for an edition of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." WALL STREET JOURNAL

Nine Entertainment Proposes New Restructuring Plan  | 
REUTERS

Florida Newspaper Sold to Private Equity Firm  |  The Revolution Capital Group, based in Los Angeles, is buying The Tampa Tribune for $9.5 million. ASSOCIATED PRESS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Navistar Strikes a Deal With Icahn  |  Navistar International agreed to add three directors chosen by Carl C. Icahn and Mark Rachesky to its board, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hedge Funds to Cut Trading Costs  |  A survey of hedge funds by Greenwich Associates found that 44 percent planned to spend less on their trading desks than in 2011, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

New Hedge Fund Focuses on Asian M.&A.  |  Ardon Maroon Fund Management has started a new hedge fund run by former executives of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, Reuters reports. REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Facebook Offers to Sweeten a Settlement Over Advertising  |  Facebook is trying to reach a deal over Sponsored Stories, a form of advertising that may help the company make money on mobile devices, the Bits blog writes. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

MegaFon Files for I.P.O. in Russia  | 
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Questions Over Where Huawei Might List  |  The Chinese telecommunications company was said to be looking to go public in the United States, but after a government investigation, it may head to Hong Kong or London, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Calxeda, Computer Chip Start-Up, Raises $55 Million  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Another Finnish Start-Up Has a Hit Game  |  Finland, the country that is home to the company behind Angry Birds, has also produced the hit game Clash of Clans, made by the games start-up Supercell, the Bits blog writes. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Fewer Banks Setting Libor  |  Though 18 banks contribute to setting Libor, submissions from a smaller number of those lenders are increasingly the ones with the most sway, as they "have been used in setting the rate on an almost daily basis in the past four months," according to Bloomberg News. BLOOMBERG NEWS

European Officials Tell Greece to Accelerate Economic Reform  | 
NEW YORK TIMES

Goldman Agrees to Settle Claims Over Options Trades  |  The firm is paying $6.75 million to eight United States exchanges. BLOOMBERG NEWS

China's Central Bank Begins Monetary Stimulus  |  The People's Bank of China offered $42.14 billion of reverse repurchase agreements, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



560 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


A Tax Too High


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 1868 words



HIGHLIGHT: Wall Street doesn't exactly love the idea of higher taxes, but a proposal in France looks much scarier than anything being discussed here. | A report on the global banking industry suggests that some lenders may be forced to put themselves up for sale. | Ireland is close to passing a law that could help struggling homeowners. | Max W. Berger, the plaintiffs lawyer, isn't celebrating his six major securities class-action settlements.


A Tax Too High  | 
Wall Street doesn't exactly love the idea of higher taxes. But a proposal in France looks much scarier than anything being discussed in this country: a 75 percent marginal tax rate on all income over $1.3 million, with capital gains taxes as high as 60 percent.

This was not what French executives were expecting when they signed a petition asking for higher taxes (yes, higher taxes), and now many are "crying foul," writes Andrew Ross Sorkin in the DealBook column. "The idea of soaking the rich is often a popular one. But if there is lesson in the French experience, despite the economic models, it is that there are limits."

Another Gloomy Forecast for Banks  |  It's already bad, and it could get worse. So predicts the latest report on the global banking industry, this one by McKinsey & Company. In it, the consulting firm calls for cost-cutting and changes in culture. It also suggests that some lenders may be forced to put themselves up for sale. "You will see significant consolidation, particularly among banks with less diversified income streams," Toos Daruvala, a McKinsey director and co-author of the report, told Reuters.

The sluggish economy doesn't help. The International Monetary Fund is lowering its forecast for global economic growth to 3.3 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2013, predicting a 15 percent chance of a recession in the United States next year. The I.M.F.'s Global Financial Stability report is due out this evening.

With the economy potentially slowing, regulators are paying close attention to the banks' capital levels. But the banks are not necessarily happy. Some are clashing with the Federal Reserve over its stress tests, demanding more information on the Fed's calculations, The Wall Street Journal reports. Sallie Krawcheck, former head of Bank of America's wealth management division, said in a Twitter message on Monday that the discord was "not a bad thing," adding that she would "worry if they agree."

Ireland's Bold Move  |  Ireland is going where no country has gone before. The government is close to passing a law that could encourage banks to reduce the amount that borrowers owe on their mortgages, "a step that no major country has been willing to take on a broad scale," DealBook's Peter Eavis reports. "The initiative, which would lower a borrower's monthly payment, could prevent a tide of foreclosures, an uncertainty that has been hanging over the Irish housing market for years." In other words, it could help Ireland's troubled economy.

Billion-Dollar Fraud Fighter  |  Max W. Berger, the plaintiffs lawyer, won six major securities class-action settlements, including the recent $2.43 billion deal with Bank of America, DealBook's Peter Lattman reports. But Mr. Berger, of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, is not celebrating." It makes me sad that in all of these scandals, no matter how good a job we do of getting results and inflicting pain, the government doesn't seem to follow suit, and nobody learns, and it's business as usual," Mr. Berger laments.

It's not just about the billion-dollar cases. DealBook's Peter J. Henning, the White Collar Watch columnist, highlights a recent case in which the Justice Department accused two brokers of secretly adding pennies to the cost of securities trades to generate $18.7 million in gains. Mr. Henning writes that "conduct involving relatively small amounts can add up to millions of dollars if allowed to go on long enough."

Buyouts Lift Carlyle  | 
The Carlyle Group's bread-and-butter private equity business generated most of the growth among its funds in the third quarter. The value of the firm's leveraged buyout funds increased about 5 percent, while its global market strategies platform rose 2 percent.

Business has been good to David M. Rubenstein, the firm's co-founder, who appeared on CBS News on Monday to talk about the Giving Pledge, the effort by Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage philanthropy.

On the Agenda  |  A court in Ghana is set to rule Tuesday on Argentina's battle with Elliott Management, whose affiliate recently seized an Argentine naval ship. Procter & Gamble has an annual shareholder meeting Tuesday after the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman was said to call for the chief executive to resign. The jury trial begins Tuesday in the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against the co-founder of the Reserve Primary money market fund, which "broke the buck" in the financial crisis. Alcoa and Chevron report earnings after the market closes. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is visiting Greece. Sallie Krawcheck is on Bloomberg TV at 10 a.m.
Aaron Levie, the C.E.O. of Box, is on CNBC at 1:30 p.m. and Bloomberg TV at 6 p.m. Glenn Hutchins, co-chief executive of Silver Lake, is on CNBC at 4:10 p.m.

Aerospace Deal on the Rocks  |  The European aerospace companies EADS and BAE, which face an Oct. 10 deadline to submit a merger plan, are moving "toward filing an extension," Bloomberg News reports. Negotiations among leaders in Britain, France and Germany became more heated as Britain opposed a plan for France to increase its stake in the combined company, Reuters reports. And there may be further trouble from shareholders, as Invesco, the biggest investor in BAE, said it had "significant reservations" about the deal.

Silicon Valley's Reality Show  |  A new trailer for Bravo's "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," features lots of partying and insightful lines like "geeks are definitely the new rock stars."

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Barclays Picks Up ING Unit in Britain  |  Barclays said it was buying the mortgages and deposits of ING Direct in Britain, in a transaction that leaves the Dutch firm with a $415 million after-tax loss. WALL STREET JOURNAL | REUTERS

Auction Begins for Anschutz Entertainment  |  The Anschutz Entertainment Group is expected to "draw bids in the $10 billion range," Reuters reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. REUTERS

BP's Russian Partners Look to Sell Stake in Joint Venture  |  The move by the Russian billionaires sets up a "race" with BP to exit TNK-BP first, Reuters writes. REUTERS

BP to Sell Texas City Refinery to Marathon Petroleum  |  BP said that it would sell its Texas City refinery and other assets to Marathon Petroleum for $2.5 billion, as the British oil company nearly finishes up an aggressive plan to pare back assets. DealBook »

Principal Financial to Buy AFP Cuprum of Chile for $1.5 Billion  | 
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Russian Consumer Lender Says It May Sell Itself  |  Tinkoff Credit Systems is considering an I.P.O., but it also said it could put itself up for sale to a company like Google, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

TPC Group Receives Higher Offer  |  The chemicals maker TPC Group said it had received a buyout offer of $721 million from Innospec, beating an earlier offer from two private equity firms, Reuters reports. REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Julius Baer to Cut 1,000 Jobs After Deal for Bank of America Unit  |  The Swiss bank plans to eliminate up to 18 percent of its work force to cut costs after it struck a deal in August with Bank of America to buy the American bank's private banking operations outside the United States and Japan. DealBook »

Wal-Mart Partners With American Express for Prepaid Card  |  American Express, which previously had been focused on high-end consumers, is offering a prepaid card with Wal-Mart Stores that is being pitched as "an option for people turned off by bank fees," The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Goldman Sachs Staff Turns Against Obama  |  The firm's employees are now "top sources of money" for Mitt Romney and the Republican party, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ex-S.E.C. Official Heads to Goldman Asset Management  |  Andrew Donohue, a former head of the investment management division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is becoming the deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Reuters reports. REUTERS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Allied World Assurance Buys Stake in MatlinPatterson  |  Along with the stake, Allied World will invest $500 million in MatlinPatterson's funds, a pattern seen in recent acquisitions by other institutional investors. DealBook »

Black's Latest Purchase  |  The chief executive of Apollo Global Management, Leon Black, is buying Phaidon Press, the art book publisher, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Black was identified earlier this year as the buyer who paid almost $120 million for an edition of Edvard Munch's "The Scream." WALL STREET JOURNAL

Nine Entertainment Proposes New Restructuring Plan  | 
REUTERS

Florida Newspaper Sold to Private Equity Firm  |  The Revolution Capital Group, based in Los Angeles, is buying The Tampa Tribune for $9.5 million. ASSOCIATED PRESS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Navistar Strikes a Deal With Icahn  |  Navistar International agreed to add three directors chosen by Carl C. Icahn and Mark Rachesky to its board, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hedge Funds to Cut Trading Costs  |  A survey of hedge funds by Greenwich Associates found that 44 percent planned to spend less on their trading desks than in 2011, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

New Hedge Fund Focuses on Asian M.&A.  |  Ardon Maroon Fund Management has started a new hedge fund run by former executives of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, Reuters reports. REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Facebook Offers to Sweeten a Settlement Over Advertising  |  Facebook is trying to reach a deal over Sponsored Stories, a form of advertising that may help the company make money on mobile devices, the Bits blog writes. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

MegaFon Files for I.P.O. in Russia  | 
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Questions Over Where Huawei Might List  |  The Chinese telecommunications company was said to be looking to go public in the United States, but after a government investigation, it may head to Hong Kong or London, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

Calxeda, Computer Chip Start-Up, Raises $55 Million  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Another Finnish Start-Up Has a Hit Game  |  Finland, the country that is home to the company behind Angry Birds, has also produced the hit game Clash of Clans, made by the games start-up Supercell, the Bits blog writes. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Fewer Banks Setting Libor  |  Though 18 banks contribute to setting Libor, submissions from a smaller number of those lenders are increasingly the ones with the most sway, as they "have been used in setting the rate on an almost daily basis in the past four months," according to Bloomberg News. BLOOMBERG NEWS

European Officials Tell Greece to Accelerate Economic Reform  | 
NEW YORK TIMES

Goldman Agrees to Settle Claims Over Options Trades  |  The firm is paying $6.75 million to eight United States exchanges. BLOOMBERG NEWS

China's Central Bank Begins Monetary Stimulus  |  The People's Bank of China offered $42.14 billion of reverse repurchase agreements, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



561 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


Obama Ad Features Someone Big, Yellow and Feathery


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR and TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 709 words



HIGHLIGHT: A new television ad by President Obama's campaign features Big Bird in a tongue-in-cheek bid to attack Mitt Romney for suggesting he would crack down on federal funding for public television, while not cracking down on big banks.


1:49 a.m. | Updated If President Obama loses the election next month, his ad makers may have a second career on "The Daily Show."

A new television ad by Mr. Obama's campaign would fit right in on the sarcasm-laced comedy show. Or it could be an opening skit for "Saturday Night Live."

The ad has a serious intention: attacking Mitt Romney for suggesting he would crack down on public funding for public television, while not saying he'd crack down on big banks.

But it comes at a critical time in the presidential campaign, and could backfire on Mr. Obama if supporters view it as a less-than-serious response to a difficult moment in his effort to win a second term in the White House.

Ads like the Big Bird spot often risk exposing campaigns to accusations that they are not focused on the important issues of the day. It is a charge that Mitt Romney's campaign seized on quickly Tuesday morning.

The pushback continued aboard the Romney campaign jet Tuesday morning. Asked for a reaction to President Obama's waggish use of Big Bird in the new ad, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney expressed disdain.

"Right now you've got 23 million Americans struggling to find work," said the adviser, Kevin Madden, ticking off other grim economic data. "I just find it troubling that the president's message, the president's focus 28 days from Election Day is Big Bird."

"The governor's going to focus acutely on jobs and the economy and what he can do to create a better more prosperous future for the American public," Mr. Madden told reporters. "And this is a much bigger focus."

At a rally in Iowa in the afternoon, Mr. Romney wasted no time in turning the tables on the Obama campaign. "These are tough times with real serious issues,' he said, "so you have to scratch our head when the president spent the past week talking about saving Big Bird.''

Aides to Mr. Obama said the ad will run alongside comedy shows that attract an audience certain to appreciate the humor. Senior advisers to Mr. Obama happily joked about the ad Tuesday morning.

But one way or the other, the 30-second spot seems destined to go down in 2012 campaign history as an iconic - if not necessarily game-changing - moment.

"Bernie Madoff. Ken Lay. Dennis Kozlowski. Criminals. Gluttons of greed," the ad's narrator says as images of three of Wall Street's most notorious white-collar villains are put on the screen. "And the evil genius who towered over them?"

In the mirrored glass of a towering office building, the ad shows a reflection of: Big Bird.

"One man has the guts to speak his name," the ad says, followed by Mr. Romney's mention of the yellow Muppet at the debate and at rallies.

"Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy," the narrator continues. "Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about, it's Sesame Street."

"Mitt Romney," the ad concludes. "Taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest."

The end of the ad? Big Bird, sleeping in a nest.

The Republican National Committee responded within hours of the ad's release, but apparently didn't think it was funny.

In a release to reporters, a spokeswoman for the committee noted that Mr. Obama has mentioned "Big Bird" and Elmo" 13 times since Wednesday's debate, but said the president has not talked about Libya or the economy.

"President Obama has offered voters only complaints and false attacks, making Sesame Street characters the cornerstone of his campaign" said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement. "While President Obama has managed to come up with some Sesame Street themed one-liners that escaped him on debate night, he has failed to come up with a plan for a second term beyond his unyielding commitment to raising taxes."

The Republicans also posted a graphic, using an image of Sesame Street's the Count to make their point.

In a predictable statement Tuesday morning, the Sesame Workshop, which produces "Sesame Street," chided Mr. Obama's campaign for using its feathery star without permission.

"Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns," the group said. "We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down."


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



562 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Ross Douthat)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


The State of the Race


BYLINE: ROSS DOUTHAT


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 773 words



HIGHLIGHT: Sean Trende on "Obama versus gravity."


In a presidential campaign as thick with polling data as this one, everyone needs a savvy sensei to help them make sense of how things actually stand. Mine is usually the wonderfully-named Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, who blends his numbers-crunching with a keen eye for the broader political dynamics that too much time in the cross-tabs can sometimes obscure.

A case in point is his piece today, which interprets six months worth of polling up and downs through the useful frame of "Obama versus gravity." In an election that most political science models suggest should be unusually close, Trende points out, the Obama campaign - with, obviously, an assist from Mitt Romney's unforced errors - has succeeded in preventing the incumbent from ever actually losing the lead. Again and again, Romney creeps up and up toward Obama's 47 or 48 percent; again and again, some combination of good strategy and good fortune (the Bain/tax return attacks, the effective Democratic convention, the "47 percent" gift) pushes him back down. This means that while the race has remained extremely close throughout, and Romney has never fallen out of striking distance, there has never been a moment when the president could be said to clearly be losing to his challenger. And as Trende writes, the persistence of an Obama lead, however narrow, has created a virtuous cycle for the White House:

First, the bandwagon effect affects fundraising. Once you move outside the partisan core, people like to back winners. This is especially true of the business community. By assiduously cultivating its front-runner status, the Obama campaign has aided its ability to press future arguments.

Second, maintaining a lead allows greater leeway in the arguments it can make. Something like the "cancer ad" from August looks hard-hitting from a campaign that is leading (and I certainly include candidate super PACs as part of the "campaign"), but would probably be described as "desperate" from one that is losing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it affects press portrayals of the candidates and party enthusiasm. This is the most important thing here: I still think the default expectation here has been that Obama should be losing. "Defying gravity" is hardly an original motif for this election, after all.

By keeping their lead intact, in other words, the Obama campaign has avoided the kind of vicious cycle that seemed to be tugging Romney toward oblivion just two weeks ago: A mix of negative horse-race coverage, diminishing donations, tumbling enthusiasm among one's own voters and rising excitement among one's rival's likely supporters. And if last week's debate has cost Obama that lead - it's down to less than a point in the RealClearPolitics average, as of this writing - then it might end up costing him even more, if the knives come out and the hysteria mounts and the press spends the next week obsessing over crises in Obamaland.

Here are Trende's concluding questions:

First, to where does gravity pull Obama? Is the mean to which he regresses a narrow lead? Or is it a significant loss? Political science models are split, with the average model showing an Obama lead of a few 10ths of a point. We don't yet really know where gravity naturally drags the president to, although the bottoms he reached over the summer suggest that it would be at least a small Romney lead with likely voters.

Second, what else, if anything, does Team Obama have to push back against gravity? The 47 percent video seems like something that would normally be held until later in the campaign. Is there anything else it can use to push back against the natural trajectory of the race?

On the first question, my sense has always been that absent a really big strategic play for the center from Romney (which hasn't happened, the last debate's pivot notwithstanding), this race's "natural" state was basically a tie, so I would expect the polls to settle back to somewhere around Obama 48, Romney 47 once last week's debate has receded a bit. But of course that assumes that nothing happens to keep the negative cycle spinning - which is why, the general unimportance of VP debates notwithstanding, the White House could really use some effective populism from Joe Biden Thursday night.

On the second question, only the Shadow knows. But given how heavily the Obama campaign has leaned on a "tear down Romney" strategy this year, it's hard to think that they haven't held something in reserve for the final sprint.



LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



563 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(City Room)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


Debate's Winner? One Costume Got a Big Bounce


BYLINE: TRISTAN HALLMAN


SECTION: NYREGION


LENGTH: 275 words



HIGHLIGHT: As costume shops across the city prepare for Halloween, Big Bird - singled out by Mr. Romney at last Wednesday's presidential debate - is the flavor of the moment.


As soon as Sarafina Panasside heard Mitt Romney say last week that he would end the federal subsidy for PBS, she knew it: the Big Bird bounce was going to change Halloween season.

"Sure enough," said Ms. Panasside, 31, a cashier at the Halloween Adventure costume shop near Union Square, "three people came in and bought the costumes when I came in the next day."

As costume shops across New York prepare for Halloween, Big Bird - singled out by Mr. Romney during the presidential debate last week as the embodiment of wasteful federal spending - is the flavor of the moment.

Several shops, including Halloween Adventure, said Tuesday that after the Obama campaign rushed out an ad mocking Mr. Romney as demonizing Big Bird, they had sold out, and were ordering more. Other shops that did not stock the costume said that people had been asking for it.

At the Ricky's on West 34th Street, Jonathan Caraballo said some customers had asked for the full-body suits but did not seem particularly interested in the partial version that lacks feet and leaves the wearer's face exposed.

Nationally, at Disguise Costumes in Poway, Calif., officially licensed manufacturer of Sesame Street costumes, Maddie Gerety, the product manager, said there had been a big spike in Big Bird sales - particularly in the adult male size.

Big Bird's bosses at "Sesame Street" seem unamused. The nonprofit group behind the PBS show has asked the Obama campaign to stop using Big Bird in its political advertising.

But Ms. Panasside is happy to stir the pot.

"My last customer called 20 minutes ago and asked if I had Big Bird," she said. "And I said, 'No, Mitt Romney took them all.'"


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



564 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 9, 2012 Tuesday


TimesCast Politics: Democrats React as the Race Tightens


BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 94 words



HIGHLIGHT: A new tone from the Obama campaign. | Some perspective on the latest polls. | A focus on turning out black voters.


The Associated Press


Jim Rutenberg reports on the latest mood in the Obama campaign after it released an ad featuring the "Sesame Street" character Big Bird.

4:50  Making Sense of the Polls

Nate Silver breaks down the latest polls that show Mitt Romney gaining on President Obama.

9:54  A Voter Profile

A video profile of Rev. John H. Grant, a long-time Democrat who is currently undecided.

12:23  Turning Out Black Voters

Susan Saulny reports on the Obama campaign's effort to turn out black voters in North Carolina and elsewhere.


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



565 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 10:20 PM EST


Ad Watch: Obama ad ties '47 percent' to Medicare vouchers


BYLINE: Natalie Jennings


LENGTH: 142 words


Obama for America: "Earned" 

What it says: "Victims. Dependent. That's what Mitt Romney called forty-seven percent of Americans. Including people on Medicare. But what about his plan for you? Romney would replace guaranteed benefits with a voucher system. Seniors could pay six thousand dollars more a year. A plan AARP says would undermine Medicare. You're no victim...you earned your benefits. Don't let Mitt Romney take them away."

What it means: Democrats think attacking Mitt Romney's comments on the "47 percent" of Americans who don't pay federal income tax was effective, and want Medicare recipients to remember that many of them are among them. The ad also hits days before vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who has proposed overhauling Medicare, is scheduled to debate Vice President Biden. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



566 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 8:37 PM EST


Obama ad: 'Romney tough on China? Since when?'


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 118 words


Obama for America, "Since When?"

What it says: "When Mitt Romney led Bain, they saw Global Tech as a good investment even knowing that the firm promoted its practice of exploiting low-wage labor to its investors."

What it means: The fight over who really doesn't like China continues. So does the Obama campaign's effort to tarnish Romney's business record, this time with help from a Boston Globe report. 

Who will see it: New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada. 

Fact Checker: "Global-Tech benefited from outsourcing, but as we can tell it was a passive investment by a Bain-related hedge fund."


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



567 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 8:24 PM EST


Who are the "undecided" voters? And what the heck are they waiting for?;
There is a small -- but significant -- number of people who say they are still undecided about which candidate to vote for in 2012. Who are these people and what do they want?


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


LENGTH: 776 words


"Saturday Night Live" has mocked them. Tony Kornheiser has said he "loathes" them. Partisans - and many political reporters - wonder just what the heck they are waiting for.

The "they" of course refers to that sliver of people who say they remain undecided in the 2012 presidential race. With four weeks left in the campaign, winning over these voters is a critical last piece of the electoral puzzle for both President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

All of which points to a simple question: Who are these undecideds and what, exactly, do they want to hear that they haven't heard yet from the candidates?

Let's start by defining the universe of who we are talking about when we talk about undecided voters.

The good folks who run the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll have been tracking what they call "up for grabs" voters since April. They define this group as people who are undecided or leaning toward a candidate and who also say they are highly interested in this campaign or have voted in at least one of the last two elections.

From April through July those "up for grabs" voters represented 18 percent of the electorate in the NBC-WSJ polls. Now, they make up just 12 percent.

That figure jibes exactly with Washington Post-ABC polling in late September that showed 12 percent of likely voters were "movable" - a category that includes the truly undecided but also those who say they lean toward either Obama or Romney but could change their minds.

And it's also in keeping with recent exit polling. In 2004, 11 percent of people said they made their mind up about which candidate to vote for in the final week before the election while in 2008 10 percent said the same.

Who is this "12 percent"? The NBC/WSJ breakdown suggests they tend to be younger (four in ten are 34 years old or younger), moderate (54 percent identified themselves that way), very pessimistic about the direction of the country (64 percent wrong track) and more positive in their views of Obama (45 percent positive) than Romney (20 percent positive).

They are also far less likely to be paying close attention to the election and to be certain to vote than the rest of the electorate. In the Post-ABC September survey, 57 percent of movable voters who said they were backing Obama or Romney said they were absolutely certain to vote on Election Day as compared to 90 percent of all registered voters who said the same. And, just 28 percent of movable voters in that poll said they were following the presidential race "very closely" as compared to 51 percent of "definite voters" who said the same.

So, in the (in)famous words of Dennis Green, undecided voters are who we thought they were. They tend to be young, low-information voters who see themselves in the ideological middle - caught between an economy they aren't happy with and an alternative to President Obama that they also aren't thrilled about.

What do undecideds want to hear in these final 28 days that might turn them (finally) to one candidate over the other?  And, is it even worth trying - giving the not-insignificant chance that they simply don't show up at all?

Opinions vary.

Jan van Lohuizen, who handled polling for President George W. Bush's re-election race in 2004, is firmly on the don't bother side of the equation. "I think they're cave dwellers who are not going to vote," said van Lohuizen. "Often if you're really in doubt or conflicted about what to do, the best thing can be to do nothing at all."

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who does work for the conservative outside group Resurgent Republic, agreed that there are undecideds who simply won't vote but insisted that the number of undecideds who could very well turn out is higher than most polls suggest.  "I'm not buying the argument that 95 percent of the electorate is locked into their choices now," said Ayres. "The quick closing of the polls since the debate reinforces that point."

Even if you agree with Ayres, however, it's tough to know what message works to persuade broad swaths of them. Because so many of these undecideds are low information voters, crafting a message that works is next to impossible.  They could just as well make up their mind based on the last person's ad they saw on TV or what their girlfriend's brother told them as any specific message being directed their way by the microtargeting arms of the two campaigns.

And yet, these are the people who - if conventional wisdom holds - will function as the tipping point toward either President Obama or Mitt Romney on Nov. 6.  

In short: Kevin Costner in "Swing Vote" was WAY closer to the 2012 reality than anyone would like to admit.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



568 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


A foreign policy echo


BYLINE: Editorial Board


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A18


LENGTH: 550 words


AFTER REPEATEDLY FUMBLING on foreign policy during his campaign, Mitt Romney delivered Monday a coherent and forceful critique of President Obama's handling of the upheavals in the Middle East. Arguing that a fateful struggle is playing out across the region, he said the United States is "missing an historic opportunity" because of Mr. Obama's failure to more aggressively support liberal forces against dictators and Islamic extremists. "It is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history - not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events," Mr. Romney said.

That analysis of Mr. Obama's policies is one we largely agree with. As we have argued frequently, the president has been too cautious and slow in supporting secular liberals in Egypt against Islamists and the military. He left Iraq open to destabilization by failing to agree with its government on a continued U.S. military presence. He led the Middle East peace process into a blind alley through his wrongheaded quarreling with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - a point Mr. Romney harped on.

Worst, Mr. Obama has stood by - or pursued feckless diplomatic initiatives - while Syria has descended into a maelstrom of massacres, opening the way to a sectarian civil war that could spread across the region. "The president is fond of saying that 'the tide of war is receding,' " Mr. Romney noted. "But when we look at the Middle East today - with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead, likely at the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates - it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office."

So how would Mr. Romney remedy these errors? That's where the weakness of his speech lay: It was hard to detect what tangible new steps the challenger would take. On Syria, Mr. Romney said he would "ensure" that "those members of the opposition who share our values . . . obtain the arms they need." The Obama administration is coordinating some materiel help to the rebels; Mr. Romney hinted that, unlike Mr. Obama, he would support supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft weapons. But he did not mention Turkey's call for the creation of protected zones on Syria's territory - a measure that would be more likely to end the war on terms favorable to the West.

Mr. Romney said he would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons "capability," in theory a more stringent red line than Mr. Obama's vow to prevent the actual construction of a bomb. But his means to that end sounded identical to those of the current administration. Having criticized Mr. Obama for failing to support Iran's "green movement," Mr. Romney said nothing about encouraging popular resistance to the regime.

In all, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Romney, like Mr. Obama, is avoiding the embrace of a more robust Mideast policy out of fear of offending voters weary of international conflict or of dividing his own advisers. Mr. Obama's campaign released a new ad calling Mr. Romney's foreign policy "reckless." In fact, this was a too-cautious response to a too-cautious policy.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



569 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


Poll shows Romney surge


BYLINE: Jerry Markon;Anne Gearan


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1458 words


LEXINGTON, Va. - Mitt Romney delivered a broad critique of President Obama's foreign policy record on Monday, as a new national poll showed a surge by the Republican challenger that put him even with and perhaps ahead of the incumbent with a month to go before the election.

Romney focused most of his criticism on Obama's approach to the Middle East, saying that a withering of American resolve in the region has made it a more dangerous place than it was when the president took office nearly four years ago.

"Hope," he said, "is not a strategy.''

Romney gave a policy-by-policy accounting of what he said he would do differently, including arming Syria's rebels, restoring the United States' commitment to traditional allies, and increasing U.S. military spending to better project American force in Asia and the Middle East. Much of it he has said before, and some of it differs little from Obama's approach. But more broadly, Romney outlined a more assertive American role in the world, and argued that it is a U.S. obligation to lead despite hard times at home.

Romney said he knows "the president hopes for a safer, freer and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope." But he added: "We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds."

The Romney and Obama campaigns have agreed for months that the election probably will be determined by which candidate is perceived as the most able to fix the weak economy. But Romney's decision to speak about foreign policy as the race enters its decisive phase underscores his new confidence after a winning debate performance last week - and a sense that events in the Middle East have rendered Obama vulnerable in an area long perceived as a strength of his.

"As the American people are looking at what he had to say today, but also his record from the last few months, the areas that should be of concern are that this is somebody who leads with chest-pounding rhetoric," Jen Psaki, the Obama campaign's press secretary, told reporters after Romney's speech. "He's inexperienced. He's been clumsy at his handling of foreign policy. And most of all, all of these factors lead to a risk that we're going to go back to the same policies that led us to some of the challenges we faced in the last few years."

But Romney appears ready to engage Obama on two fronts: the economy at home and the United States' stature abroad. Both, Romney has argued, have suffered during Obama's tenure. And new polling suggests that voters are increasingly apt to believe that the former Massachusetts governor may have the ideas to correct the problems he has identified.

The Pew Research Center released a national poll Monday that shows Romney leading Obama by four points - 49 percent to 45 percent - among likely voters. Romney trailed Obama by eight points among that group in a Pew poll taken last month, a few weeks before the first presidential debate.

The two candidates are even among registered voters with 46 percent each - the lowest mark for Obama in the Pew survey in more than a year.

Romney gained support in nearly every category - leadership, willingness to work with the other party and honesty, among others - and now leads Obama by seven points among registered voters on the question of which candidate has "new ideas." He also jumped five points on who would make "wise decisions about foreign policy," although Obama still leads on that question by four points. The survey polled 1,511 adults from Thursday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Amid a burst of momentum, Romney arrived in this swing state on Monday for his speech at the Virginia Military Institute. He addressed the violence in Libya and Egypt and told more than 400 cadets and invited guests that he would "change course in the Middle East," including by taking a hard line on Iran and arming Syrian rebels.

The address mostly repackaged things Romney has said before, sometimes with greater precision. And he offered few concrete ways he would change the Obama administration's current approach.

Although he made broad critiques of what he referred to as the president's "passivity," Romney did not call for any new armed intervention in any Middle East conflict.

"I believe that if America does not lead, others will," he said, "others who do not share our interests and our values."

Romney said Obama had failed reformist protesters in Iran in 2009 and is now failing the rebel forces in Syria who oppose President Bashar al-Assad. The United States is "sitting on the sidelines" instead of working with other nations to arm the rebels, he added.

Much of Romney's address focused on the complex threat posed by Iran, but he did not propose solutions that differ from the Obama administration's current policy of tightening sanctions and insisting that an Iranian nuclear bomb is intolerable.

Romney did not say whether he would continue the current international diplomatic effort to persuade Iran to back off the most worrisome elements of its nuclear program. Iran says the program is aimed only at peaceful nuclear energy and medical uses.

Romney spoke confidently, telling the audience that it is Obama's "responsibility to use America's great power to shape history - not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events."

He did not call for a new "red line" on Iran, as Israel has said it wants, and he did not specifically say he would be open to a future U.S. attack on Iran to stop it from acquiring "nuclear capability" so Israel doesn't have to do it now. He did not mention the crippling effect that sanctions are having or call for regime change in Iran.

Romney said he would support Israel, the nation presumably most at risk if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, and charged that Obama's sometimes tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has helped embolden Iran and other adversaries.

"I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security," Romney said. "The world must never see any daylight between our two nations."

That was a reference to a remark Obama reportedly made early in his administration to "put some daylight" between the United States and Israel. He has since pledged many times to support Israel, and his administration says ties between the two nations have never been stronger.

Romney said he would bulk up the U.S. naval presence around Iran, something the Obama administration has done occasionally. He said he would add to the Navy's fleet, but did not say how he would pay for it. Romney also promised new conditions on foreign aid, including to Egypt.

"I will make it clear to the recipients of our aid that in return for our material support, they must meet the responsibilities of every decent, modern government," Romney said.

He said Obama has "no trade agenda to speak of" and has signed no new bilateral trade deals. That is technically true, because the deals he signed with South Korea, Panama and Colombia were begun under Republican President George W. Bush.

The former CEO, in his comfort zone when focused on the economy, has stumbled during his occasional forays into foreign policy. He offended his British hosts and Palestinian leaders during an overseas trip in July, did not mention Afghanistan in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and was roundly criticized for the timing of his assault on Obama's handling of the violence in Libya.

With increasing questions about how the Obama administration has dealt with the attacks last month in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans - and with Romney gaining momentum from his widely praised performance last week in the first presidential debate - some experts said the speech was well timed.

But the Obama campaign, citing foreign policy achievements - including the killing of Osama bin Laden and the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq - was undeterred. Campaign officials have accused Romney of flip-flopping on the U.S. mission in Libya and troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and have pointed out that on some issues, such as the Iranian nuclear program, Romney has outlined positions similar to Obama's.

On Monday morning, the Obama campaign released a television ad that blasted Romney's foreign policy credentials and said his "gaffe-filled" European tour in July showed his "reckless" and "amateurish" approach to international issues.

The candidates will debate the issue during their last one-on-one encounter, scheduled for Oct. 22.

markonj@washpost.com

anne.gearan@washpost.com

Gearan reported from Washington. Scott Wilson and Jon Cohen in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



570 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 5:35 PM EST


Sesame Workshop requests Big Bird ads be taken down


BYLINE: Natalie Jennings


LENGTH: 136 words


Elmo is not tickled. Sesame Street wants Obama Big Bird ad taken downsesameworkshop.org/our-blog/2012/...

- Jim Acosta (@jimacostacnn) October 9, 2012

Just hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad mocking Mitt Romney for saying he will cut funding for PBS and caustically linking Big Bird to Wall Street villains, Sesame Workshop posted this statement on its Web site: 

Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down. 

A Romney campaign spokesman addressed the ad earlier Tuesday, saying "troubling that the president's message, the president's focus 28 days out from Election Day is Big Bird." 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



571 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 4:51 PM EST


New Obama ad stars Big Bird alongside Bernie Madoff


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 248 words


President Obama's reelection campaign is up with a new ad hitting Mitt Romney over his comments about Big Bird at last week's debate.

The ad features images of notorious corporate villains Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay and suggests that Romney sees Big Bird as the biggest villain of all.

"Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about; it's Sesame Street," the narrator says.

Obama has offered a similar line on the campaign trail, and his campaign clearly sees Romney's threat to pull federal funding for public broadcasting as some sort of gaffe.

It's not clear how much money is behind the ad; ads like this tend to be created for news media buzz rather than big advertising buys. The Obama campaign said only that the ad will air on national broadcasts and cable.

The Romney campaign responded by pointing to Obama's 2008 comment in which he said that a politician who is on the defensive makes "a big election about small things."

The GOP is also out with an info-graphic noting how many times Obama has mentioned Sesame Street in recent days, compared to how many times he has mentioned Libya (hint: zero).

Update 12:49 p.m.: The Sesame Workshop is requesting that the ad be taken down, citing its nonpartisan status.

Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



572 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 4:40 PM EST


The $5 trillion question;
Is Mitt Romney's tax cut as big as President Obama claims?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 756 words


"President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney's economic plan. The latest? Not telling the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan."

- new Mitt Romney campaign ad

"So lowering the rates, as Mitt Romney has said he would do, to 20 percent - $2.7 trillion over 10 years; eliminating the AMT [alternative minimum tax] - $700 billion; repealing high-income payroll tax - $300 billion; ending estate tax - $150 billion; lowering the corporate rate from 35 to 25 [percent] - $1.1 trillion. That adds up to $4.8 trillion. If you factor in interest for additional borrowing, you get to $5 trillion."

- Jennifer Psaki, Obama campaign traveling press secretary, Oct. 7, 2012

$5 trillion! It's such a big figure.

President Obama says Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years; Mitt Romney adamantly denies it. He has a new ad slamming Obama for this claim - while repeating a charge that Obama has a secret plan to raise taxes that we already deemed worthy of Three Pinocchios.

So the question arises: Is the Obama claim accurate?

The Facts

Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman, laid out the math to reporters on Sunday. There's just one problem: Romney also has said he will make his plan "revenue neutral" by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, much as Ronald Reagan did when he passed a tax reform in 1986.

And there's another problem: Romney has not provided many details about which deductions he would eliminate. He has suggested the home mortgage deduction, charitable contributions and employer-paid health insurance might be protected; he has also indicated he is thinking of some sort of cap on the amount of deductions a taxpayer could claim.

Moreover, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has analyzed the specifics of Romney's plan thus far released and concluded that the numbers aren't there to make it revenue neutral. In last week's debate, Romney countered that "six other studies" have found that not to be the case, but those studies actually do not provide much evidence that Romney's proposal - as sketchy as it is - would be revenue neutral without making unrealistic assumptions.

Given the uncertainty, the Obama campaign has assumed the worst about Romney's plan - that it would mean higher taxes for middle-class Americans - even though, as Romney has stated, there is no chance he would try to implement such a plan as president. Moreover, the director of the Tax Policy Center has taken issue with Obama campaign ads making such claims, saying the organization's study merely proves that Romney's numbers don't add up.

Still, Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, has suggested that tax reductions would take preference over revenue neutrality. Romney himself has been inconsistent in describing the impact of his tax plan on the wealthy. In the first presidential debate, he declared, "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." But in the GOP Arizona debate in February, he said: "We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.''

Romney appears to wants to have his cake and eat it, too - getting credit for cutting rates without detailing exactly what the impact would be for taxpayers once revenue is recaptured by curtailing tax deductions.

The Pinocchio Test

By itself, the Obama campaign's $5 trillion claim is an overstatement. Clearly, the campaign recognizes that Romney hopes to cut the cost of the tax cut because it also regularly slams him for the supposed impact of eliminating tax deductions. So the figure reflects just half of the story about Romney's tax plan - just as Republican often complain about the cost of the president's health-care law, without acknowledging the tax increases used to make it revenue neutral in the first 10 years.

Still, Romney has left himself open to criticism because he has not specified how he would fill the $5 trillion hole created by his tax plans. If he released fuller details, he would be on firmer ground to complain about Obama's assumptions. (His campaign should also drop the bogus claim that Obama plans to raises taxes by $4,000, given we have already exposed how that is incorrect.)

Two Pinocchios

(for Obama)

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



573 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 9, 2012 Tuesday 4:12 PM EST


Another misleading China ad from Mitt Romney;
A Romney ad claims President Obama said "no" to action while China stole U.S. technology and cost 2 million jobs.


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 1272 words


"Fewer Americans are working today than when President Obama took office. It doesn't have to be this way if Obama would stand up to China. China is stealing American ideas and technology - everything from computers to fighter jets. Seven times Obama could have taken action. Seven times he has said no. His policies cost us 2 million jobs."

-- Narration from Mitt Romney campaign ad

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney continued to stress President Obama's handling of U.S.-China relations last week, claiming with this ad that the policies of the current administration have cost the U.S. 2 million jobs.

What policies have done this? The ad refers to China's alleged stealing of "American ideas and technology -- everything from computers to fighter jets."

Let's examine those issues and determine whether the president has said "no" to taking action on them. This ad is the lastest in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges on China between the two candidates. (President Obama, for instance, previously earned Three Pinocchios for making misleading claims about Romney's business record.)

The Facts

There's little doubt that Chinese companies have infringed on U.S. intellectual property rights, just as the Romney ad claims. China essentially acknowledged the problem by agreeing to implement stricter measures to curb piracy and counterfeiting during the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meetings in 2010.

Not only did China promise better intellectual property protections that year, but it consented to stop discriminating against U.S. technology in government procurement, effectively opening up a new market for American innovators.

A 2011 report from the independent U.S. International Trade Commission noted that "these issues were among the central themes of the December 2010 U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) meetings." So the 2010 agreements count as wins for the Obama administration, and they run counter to the notion that the president has stood by while China stole American innovation.

What is the economic impact of Chinese intellectual-property infringements? The trade commission report found that improving protection of U.S. intellectual-property rights could lead to an additional 2.1 million full-time equivalent jobs.

But again, the Obama administration has taken action on this issue. Furthermore, the Romney ad said the president "cost" 2 million jobs, as though those positions actually existed and then disappeared during his administration. The difference here is missed opportunity versus actual loss of jobs, and the video was not clear about which it referred to.

As for China stealing fighter-jet technology, the Romney campaign pointed us to an April 2009 Wall Street Journal report that said "Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever."

The article quoted former U.S. officials saying the attacks "appear to have originated in China," so the Romney campaign seems to be correct about the culprit. But the report noted that the infiltration dated back at least as far as 2007," which was during the George W. Bush administration. A separate Washington Post piece on the issue said experts and former defense officials did not believe the attackers were able to access classified information.

Bush had planned to spend $17 billion on a new initiative to help combat the online-security breach, according to the Journal article. The Obama administration decided in May 2009 to expand on that program, which the Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima reported on shortly before the administration's decision.

Roughly two months after the Journal report, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates established a new U.S. Cyber Command to address "growing threats against the Defense Department's computer networks."

These actions alone contradict the notion that the current administration has sat on its hands when it comes to dealing with China. But the president has also supported the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which fell eight votes short of advancing on the Senate floor in August -- 40 Republicans voted against cloture, which helped block the bill from advancing.

That brings us to the "seven times Obama could have taken action." The Romney ad mentioned only intellectual-property theft and the online-security breach, but this claim has nothing to do with those issues. It actually refers to seven opportunities the Obama administration had to apply the currency manipulator label to China through the Treasury Department's Semiannual Report on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policy to Congress.

Setting aside the fact that Romney's ad has conflated several issues, let's look at the one it didn't even bother to mention -- currency manipulation. We addressed this issue in a previous column.

U.S. officials believe - and economic experts generally agree - that China keeps its currency artificially low to give its exports an advantage. The Obama administration has opted against using the currency manipulator label, instead filing at least seven World Trade Organization complaints against its Asian trading partner relating to specific industries.

The WTO has largely upheld four of those complaints, but the president's critics say this is a piecemeal approach. They point out that addressing China's currency policy would be a far more sweeping approach.

Indeed, the Obama administration has pressured China to change its currency policy, and President Hu Jintao in 2011 promised to enact reforms - although the implementation seems to be inconsistent so far.

Romney is not alone in talking tough about China. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) used the same kind of rhetoric during his 2004 race against Bush, and Obama vowed to stop the Asian nation from manipulating its currency during his 2008 run.

But neither Bush nor Obama ever tried to tag China as a currency manipulator. That's probably because applying the label could heighten tensions between the United States and one of its largest trading partners - not to mention one of its largest debt holders. It could also affect unity between the two nations in dealing with such geopolitical issues as Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Former Bush White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten had this to say recently in regard to Romney's China talk: "If history is a guide, such sharp campaign rhetoric is blunted by the reality of governing."

The Pinocchio Test

The Romney ad states that Obama had seven opportunities to take action against China. The average viewer - having limited knowledge of U.S.-China relations- could easily assume that the first claim relates to fighter-jet technology and intellectual-property theft, but it actually refers to currency manipulation, which the campaign didn't even mention.

The ad also said that Obama's policies toward China have cost 2 million U.S. jobs. But it fails to mention that this figure applies to intellectual-property theft, and it technically refers to missed job opportunities, not jobs lost.

On top of conflating multiple issues, the ad overlooks steps the Obama administration has taken to address those problems, including currency manipulation to an extent. The Romney campaign earns Three Pinocchios.

Three Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



574 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 9, 2012 Tuesday
Regional Edition


A foreign policy echo


BYLINE: Editorial Board


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A18


LENGTH: 550 words


AFTER REPEATEDLY FUMBLING on foreign policy during his campaign, Mitt Romney delivered Monday a coherent and forceful critique of President Obama's handling of the upheavals in the Middle East. Arguing that a fateful struggle is playing out across the region, he said the United States is "missing an historic opportunity" because of Mr. Obama's failure to more aggressively support liberal forces against dictators and Islamic extremists. "It is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history - not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events," Mr. Romney said.

That analysis of Mr. Obama's policies is one we largely agree with. As we have argued frequently, the president has been too cautious and slow in supporting secular liberals in Egypt against Islamists and the military. He left Iraq open to destabilization by failing to agree with its government on a continued U.S. military presence. He led the Middle East peace process into a blind alley through his wrongheaded quarreling with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - a point Mr. Romney harped on.

Worst, Mr. Obama has stood by - or pursued feckless diplomatic initiatives - while Syria has descended into a maelstrom of massacres, opening the way to a sectarian civil war that could spread across the region. "The president is fond of saying that 'the tide of war is receding,' " Mr. Romney noted. "But when we look at the Middle East today - with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead, likely at the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates - it is clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office."

So how would Mr. Romney remedy these errors? That's where the weakness of his speech lay: It was hard to detect what tangible new steps the challenger would take. On Syria, Mr. Romney said he would "ensure" that "those members of the opposition who share our values . . . obtain the arms they need." The Obama administration is coordinating some materiel help to the rebels; Mr. Romney hinted that, unlike Mr. Obama, he would support supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft weapons. But he did not mention Turkey's call for the creation of protected zones on Syria's territory - a measure that would be more likely to end the war on terms favorable to the West.

Mr. Romney said he would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons "capability," in theory a more stringent red line than Mr. Obama's vow to prevent the actual construction of a bomb. But his means to that end sounded identical to those of the current administration. Having criticized Mr. Obama for failing to support Iran's "green movement," Mr. Romney said nothing about encouraging popular resistance to the regime.

In all, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Romney, like Mr. Obama, is avoiding the embrace of a more robust Mideast policy out of fear of offending voters weary of international conflict or of dividing his own advisers. Mr. Obama's campaign released a new ad calling Mr. Romney's foreign policy "reckless." In fact, this was a too-cautious response to a too-cautious policy.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



575 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 9, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


Poll shows Romney surge


BYLINE: Jerry Markon;Anne Gearan


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1455 words


DATELINE: LEXINGTON, VA.


LEXINGTON, Va. - Mitt Romney delivered a broad critique of President Obama's foreign policy record on Monday, as a new national poll showed a surge by the Republican challenger that put him even with and perhaps ahead of the incumbent with a month to go before the election.

Romney focused most of his criticism on Obama's approach to the Middle East, saying that a withering of American resolve in the region has made it a more dangerous place than it was when the president took office nearly four years ago.

"Hope," he said, "is not a strategy.''

Romney gave a policy-by-policy accounting of what he said he would do differently, including arming Syria's rebels, restoring the United States' commitment to traditional allies, and increasing U.S. military spending to better project American force in Asia and the Middle East. Much of it he has said before, and some of it differs little from Obama's approach. But more broadly, Romney outlined a more assertive American role in the world, and argued that it is a U.S. obligation to lead despite hard times at home.

Romney said he knows "the president hopes for a safer, freer and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope." But he added: "We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds."

The Romney and Obama campaigns have agreed for months that the election probably will be determined by which candidate is perceived as the most able to fix the weak economy. But Romney's decision to speak about foreign policy as the race enters its decisive phase underscores his new confidence after a winning debate performance last week - and a sense that events in the Middle East have rendered Obama vulnerable in an area long perceived as a strength of his.

"As the American people are looking at what he had to say today, but also his record from the last few months, the areas that should be of concern are that this is somebody who leads with chest-pounding rhetoric," Jen Psaki, the Obama campaign's press secretary, told reporters after Romney's speech. "He's inexperienced. He's been clumsy at his handling of foreign policy. And most of all, all of these factors lead to a risk that we're going to go back to the same policies that led us to some of the challenges we faced in the last few years."

But Romney appears ready to engage Obama on two fronts: the economy at home and the United States' stature abroad. Both, Romney has argued, have suffered during Obama's tenure. And new polling suggests that voters are increasingly apt to believe that the former Massachusetts governor may have the ideas to correct the problems he has identified.

The Pew Research Center released a national poll Monday that shows Romney leading Obama by four points - 49 percent to 45 percent - among likely voters. Romney trailed Obama by eight points among that group in a Pew poll taken last month, a few weeks before the first presidential debate.

The two candidates are even among registered voters with 46 percent each - the lowest mark for Obama in the Pew survey in more than a year.

Romney gained support in nearly every category - leadership, willingness to work with the other party and honesty, among others - and now leads Obama by seven points among registered voters on the question of which candidate has "new ideas." He also jumped five points on who would make "wise decisions about foreign policy," although Obama still leads on that question by four points. The survey polled 1,511 adults from Thursday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Amid a burst of momentum, Romney arrived in this swing state on Monday for his speech at the Virginia Military Institute. He addressed the violence in Libya and Egypt and told more than 400 cadets and invited guests that he would "change course in the Middle East," including by taking a hard line on Iran and arming Syrian rebels.

The address mostly repackaged things Romney has said before, sometimes with greater precision. And he offered few concrete ways he would change the Obama administration's current approach.

Although he made broad critiques of what he referred to as the president's "passivity," Romney did not call for any new armed intervention in any Middle East conflict.

"I believe that if America does not lead, others will," he said, "others who do not share our interests and our values."

Romney said Obama had failed reformist protesters in Iran in 2009 and is now failing the rebel forces in Syria who oppose President Bashar al-Assad. The United States is "sitting on the sidelines" instead of working with other nations to arm the rebels, he added.

Much of Romney's address focused on the complex threat posed by Iran, but he did not propose solutions that differ from the Obama administration's current policy of tightening sanctions and insisting that an Iranian nuclear bomb is intolerable.

Romney did not say whether he would continue the current international diplomatic effort to persuade Iran to back off the most worrisome elements of its nuclear program. Iran says the program is aimed only at peaceful nuclear energy and medical uses.

Romney spoke confidently, telling the audience that it is Obama's "responsibility to use America's great power to shape history - not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events."

He did not call for a new "red line" on Iran, as Israel has said it wants, and he did not specifically say he would be open to a future U.S. attack on Iran to stop it from acquiring "nuclear capability" so Israel doesn't have to do it now. He did not mention the crippling effect that sanctions are having or call for regime change in Iran.

Romney said he would support Israel, the nation presumably most at risk if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, and charged that Obama's sometimes tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has helped embolden Iran and other adversaries.

"I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security," Romney said. "The world must never see any daylight between our two nations."

That was a reference to a remark Obama reportedly made early in his administration to "put some daylight" between the United States and Israel. He has since pledged many times to support Israel, and his administration says ties between the two nations have never been stronger.

Romney said he would bulk up the U.S. naval presence around Iran, something the Obama administration has done occasionally. He said he would add to the Navy's fleet, but did not say how he would pay for it. Romney also promised new conditions on foreign aid, including to Egypt.

"I will make it clear to the recipients of our aid that in return for our material support, they must meet the responsibilities of every decent, modern government," Romney said.

He said Obama has "no trade agenda to speak of" and has signed no new bilateral trade deals. That is technically true, because the deals he signed with South Korea, Panama and Colombia were begun under Republican President George W. Bush.

The former CEO, in his comfort zone when focused on the economy, has stumbled during his occasional forays into foreign policy. He offended his British hosts and Palestinian leaders during an overseas trip in July, did not mention Afghanistan in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and was roundly criticized for the timing of his assault on Obama's handling of the violence in Libya.

With increasing questions about how the Obama administration has dealt with the attacks last month in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans - and with Romney gaining momentum from his widely praised performance last week in the first presidential debate - some experts said the speech was well timed.

But the Obama campaign, citing foreign policy achievements - including the killing of Osama bin Laden and the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq - was undeterred. Campaign officials have accused Romney of flip-flopping on the U.S. mission in Libya and troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and have pointed out that on some issues, such as the Iranian nuclear program, Romney has outlined positions similar to Obama's.

On Monday morning, the Obama campaign released a television ad that blasted Romney's foreign policy credentials and said his "gaffe-filled" European tour in July showed his "reckless" and "amateurish" approach to international issues.

The candidates will debate the issue during their last one-on-one encounter, scheduled for Oct. 22.

markonj@washpost.com

anne.gearan@washpost.com

Gearan reported from Washington. Scott Wilson and Jon Cohen in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



576 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 8, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


Biden Up Next, Obama's Aides Plot Comeback


BYLINE: By PETER BAKER and TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1511 words


WASHINGTON -- President Obama's campaign is working feverishly to restore its momentum after a lackluster debate performance last week, an effort that began with a conference call 10 minutes before the debate even ended and led to new advertisements, a rewritten stump speech, a carefully timed leak and a reversal of months-old strategy.

Perhaps most important as the president's team struggles to put his campaign back on track is a renewed effort to win the three remaining debates, starting with Thursday's face-off between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan. Mr. Biden began traveling to a Delaware hotel on Sunday for three days of debate camp.

Under the tutelage of David Axelrod, the president's chief strategist who is personally overseeing the preparations, Mr. Biden will be counseled on how to avoid Mr. Obama's mistakes and even correct them with a more aggressive prosecution of the Republican ticket. Mr. Axelrod's involvement highlights the stakes the Obama campaign places on the debate, and Mr. Biden has been reading ''Young Guns,'' the book co-written by Mr. Ryan, and practicing attack lines that Mr. Obama avoided.

The focus on Mr. Biden comes as the campaign tries to diagnose what went wrong in Denver and what to do about it. Advisers had seen two presidents during practice debates, one who had been listless and passive two nights before and another energetic and aggressive the next night. It turned out the former was the one who showed up in Denver. He kept looking down and was not using the lines they had practiced assailing Mitt Romney, who kept the president on the defensive and presented a forceful case against his re-election.

For Mr. Obama, it was arguably the lowest point in his campaign for a second term. The campaign's own focus groups and research indicated that he lost. Mr. Obama did not fully realize as he walked off the stage just how badly it had gone, but aides said he resolved to step up his game. ''He doesn't brood -- he acts,'' Mr. Axelrod said. ''Whatever the concerns were about yesterday, he wakes up the next day ready to take it on again.''

On the conference call convened by aides in Denver and Chicago even as the candidates were still on stage, there was no debate in the Obama campaign about the debate. None of the advisers fooled themselves into thinking it was anything but a disaster. Instead, they scrambled for ways to recover. They resolved to go after Mr. Romney with a post-debate assault on his truthfulness. Ad makers were ordered to work all night to produce an attack ad. And they would seize on Mr. Romney's vow to cut financing for Big Bird.

Mr. Obama has been helped by two subsequent events. A labor report on Friday showed that unemployment had dropped to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, still historically high but back down to where it was when he took office. And his campaign privately spread the word that fund-raising had soared, giving him a bankroll for a comeback attempt.

But the debate remains a singular event in the life of the campaign, watched by more than 67 million people -- a larger audience than for any of Mr. Obama's 2008 debates, either of his nominating conventions or any of his State of the Union addresses.

Thursday's debate between Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan may not draw quite the same audience, but both sides view it as critical and are preparing for a contentious clash. ''With Paul Ryan, it's a different dynamic'' than when he debated Sarah Palin in 2008, said Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor who played Ms. Palin in debate practice then. The vice president ''can go hard on policy.''

In rehearsals, Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who is playing Mr. Ryan, has mimicked what he considered the Republican's staccato speaking style and penchant for slashing arguments wrapped in a smile. ''I expect the vice president to come at me like a cannonball,'' Mr. Ryan told The Weekly Standard.

Mr. Biden's advisers view Mr. Ryan as a walking encyclopedia of numbers and policy and hope he might get lost in the weeds. ''The key is to be able to cut through the numbers that often don't make sense,'' said Mr. Van Hollen. Also crucial is helping Mr. Biden tame his own loquacious nature and proclivity for gaffes.

The Obama-Biden team approached the debate knowing the perils. History showed that incumbents tended to lose their first debate, both because of their own confidence and the chance for a challenger to appear as an equal to a sitting president.

Like other presidents, Mr. Obama's debate preparations were hindered by his day job, his practice sessions often canceled or truncated because of events, advisers said. One session took place just after he addressed a service for the four Americans slain in Libya, leaving him distracted.

Mr. Obama does not like debates to begin with, aides have long said, viewing them as media-driven gamesmanship. He did not do all that well in 2008 but benefited from Senator John McCain's grumpy performances. Mr. Obama made clear to advisers that he was not happy about debating Mr. Romney, whom he views with disdain. It was something to endure, rather than an opportunity, aides said.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was recruited to play Mr. Romney. The preparation team was kept small. The most important players were Mr. Axelrod; David Plouffe, the president's senior adviser; and Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director. Others included Joel Benenson, the president's pollster; Ronald A. Klain, Mr. Biden's former chief of staff; and Robert Barnett, a longtime Democratic debate coach.

By the time Mr. Obama retreated to Nevada for a final couple days of practice, the debate prep team was getting by on as little as three hours of sleep a night as they crafted answers and attack lines. Mr. Kerry played a range of Mr. Romneys -- aggressive, laid back, hard-edge conservative -- and got in the president's face, according to people in the room. Mr. Obama's alternating performances left aides walking off Air Force One in Denver looking worried.

On stage, Mr. Obama seemed thrown off as Mr. Romney emphasized elements of his agenda that seemed more moderate and was surprised that the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, did not pose more pointed questions. The president's team had decided in advance not to raise Mr. Romney's tenure at Bain Capital, aides said, but Mr. Obama held back on other attack lines they had intended to use. The base wanted him ''to gut Romney,'' one adviser said, but swing voters hate that and he was seeking a balance. Few thought he found it.

Joining the damage-control conference call were Mr. Axelrod, Mr. Plouffe, Jim Messina, the campaign manager, and Stephanie Cutter, his deputy, in Denver; and Ms. Dunn, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, and Larry Grisolano, a political adviser, in Chicago. In just minutes, they reversed a longstanding strategic decision; at the start of the campaign they had decided to attack Mr. Romney as a committed conservative rather than a flip-flopper, but now they decided to use his debate statements to argue that he was reinventing himself.

Mr. Obama walked off the stage thinking he at least had gotten in some of his points. ''This was a terrific debate,'' he said in the closing minutes.

''He knew that Romney had had a decent night as well,'' Mr. Axelrod said later. ''But it's very hard when you're standing there. It's hard when you're up there to judge it completely.''

Mr. Obama's advisers were so off balance that they did not show up in the media filing center for the traditional post-debate spin until long after the Republicans. But they were relieved that at least there was no single memorable moment to be used against Mr. Obama in an ad. And they took some solace from focus groups showing that he broke even with Mr. Romney on substance even if he lost over all.

By morning, the Democrats had an ad criticizing Mr. Romney. They had scheduled a morning rally and were surprised that the Romney team had not. As they watched Twitter and some of the entertainment shows on television, they noticed a lot of attention on Mr. Romney's pledge to cut money for public broadcasting, so they added a line to Mr. Obama's speech and dispatched a volunteer in a Big Bird costume to a Romney event.

The president proved as aggressive in his post-debate rallies as he was passive in the debate, but the campaign was besieged by anxious Democrats. Mr. Messina had to pep up a demoralized staff in Chicago. Mr. Obama took the blame during calls with advisers. ''This is on me,'' he told them. Asked by some if Mr. Kerry was at fault, Mr. Obama said no. ''It wasn't Kerry,'' he sad. ''Kerry was fine.''

Beyond the vice-presidential debate, Mr. Obama is focused on his next encounter with Mr. Romney, on Oct. 16; lines unused in Denver may finally be aired in Long Island. But for a hypercompetitive politician, the first debate remains a raw subject. Asked if Mr. Obama was making fun of his performance, one adviser said, ''We're not at that point yet.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/us/politics/biden-up-next-obamas-aides-plot-comeback.html


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. greeting a crowd recently in Boca Raton, Fla., and Representative Paul D. Ryan greeting two nonvoters in Sturtevant, Wis., on Sunday. The first and only debate between the two vice-presidential candidates is on Thursday. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



577 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 8, 2012 Monday
The International Herald Tribune


Where Commerce and Politics Collide


BYLINE: By IAN BREMMER and DAVID GORDON


SECTION: Section ; Column 0; OpEd; OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; Pg.


LENGTH: 984 words


Whatever happened to the reassuring view that expanding trade ties make for a safer and more prosperous world? This idea has been long present in U.S. strategies toward China, even before being concretized in Robert Zoellick's notion of integrating China into the world financial and commercial systems as a way of promoting ''responsible stakeholdership.''

The Chinese had a parallel concept -- that promoting economic interdependence with America would counter Washington's natural tendency to block China's rise as an alternative power.

But as President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney argue over who can be tougher on China and its trade practices, and as a wave of anti-American nationalism surges across China, the commercial partnership meant to bring Washington and Beijing closer together appears to be pushing the world's two largest economies further apart. Are we headed for some new form of Cold War-style confrontation?

We don't think so. Behind all the finger-pointing and fist-shaking on both sides is a powerful economic interdependence that constrains both countries and was totally missing from U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War. What's bad for one economy is still bad for the other, and both Washington and Beijing know it.

With trillions invested in U.S. Treasuries, and the continuing sluggishness of American consumer spending, China has a huge stake in a more robust U.S. recovery. And the prospect of a rapidly growing consumer sector in China creates enormous opportunities for American agriculture and industry.

But macro-economic interdependence brings with it a whole range of tactical tensions -- over exchange rates, intellectual property, investment rules and standard-setting. Yet there is also a more strategic downside to mutually assured economic destruction, because neither side has perfect control over events that might undermine the relationship, and because reduced risk of all-out conflict lets them feel freer to play with fire.

There are a growing number of security risks around the world. In Asia, an expanding U.S. security and commercial presence has China's next generation of leaders on edge, and Beijing finds itself in various forms of direct conflict with many of its neighbors, some of whom are America's strategic allies. In the Middle East, a variety of new actors with competing agendas are jostling to fill emerging power vacuums. In Europe, Germany has taken a leadership role in what is sure to emerge as a quite different continent. In Russia's sphere of influence, a government that faces rising risks at home may well respond more aggressively abroad.

In the past, these sorts of tectonic geopolitical shifts and the uncertainty they create might well have provoked war. But today, the economic dimension is at least as important as military muscle in shaping the balance of power. That makes for more complicated international relationships.

Look more closely at the contradictions. A military rivalry is a zero-sum relationship; what's good for one side is bad for the other. But economic security is good for both. America and China both need oil to flow smoothly from the Middle East and for peace to prevail in the South China Sea. Deepening trade relations give each side a stake in the other's success.

As China and Japan bicker over territorial disputes, both sides are trying to exploit local resentments for political gain. But they share an overriding incentive to protect a deepening economic partnership that reinforces stability at home by enriching them both. Similarly, Turkey and Iran are backing different sides in Syria, but neither will let their bilateral relationship deteriorate too sharply; Iran needs Turkey to go easy on enforcement of sanctions, and Turkey needs Iran to continue selling its natural gas.

However, there are two important reasons why this is not as good as it appears. First, the assurance that all-out war has become so unlikely encourages governments to flirt with economically damaging lower-level conflicts.

If U.S.-China trade relations spiral into various forms of confrontation, the risk of proxy battles in cyberspace will rise sharply, and a more aggressive Chinese approach to territorial disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and others could draw Washington into fights it hopes to avoid.

If Iran tries to undermine Turkey's opposition to Syria's government by offering clandestine support for Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, the trouble between Ankara and Tehran could escalate to levels that neither can manage. Regional war in Asia or the Middle East remains extremely unlikely, but a constant state of tension will have an economic impact.

Second, conflicts can take on a life of their own. Beijing may discover over time that it's becoming much more difficult to keep a lid on the crowds it riles up for geopolitical advantage, and Japanese leaders may talk themselves into conflicts from which they can't easily back down. Arab world animosities may grow beyond the ability of inexperienced new governments to control.

Governments around the world face much more complicated challenges than the Cold War could offer, and economic interdependence can create joint vulnerability. The risk of superpower nuclear war is much lower, but there is little to protect one side's security from volatility on the other.

Following the leadership transition in Beijing and the presidential election in America, both China and the United States need to reinvigorate their top-level dialogue, and pay more attention to ensuring that domestic politics does not overcome the incentives for conflict avoidance that mutually assured economic destruction has created.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and author of ''Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World.''David Gordon is head of research at Eurasia Group and former director of policy planning at the State Department.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/opinion/08iht-edbremmer08.html


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



578 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 8, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


Spinning Gaffes Into Gags: Live From New York, It's Debate Night


BYLINE: By BILL CARTER


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1316 words


All last week, Lorne Michaels, the creator and longtime executive producer of ''Saturday Night Live'' was working the phone trying to nail down a visit to the show from either of this year's presidential candidates. By late Friday, it looked like it wouldn't happen, at least for this last week.

But Mr. Michaels still needed star power. So he put in a call to Big Bird.

Mitt Romney had mentioned the Sesame Street character while discussing his planned cuts to financing for PBS on Wednesday, so Mr. Michaels had his writers create a Big Bird segment for the show's ''Weekend Update.'' But executives at the Children's Television Workshop were reluctant to have their beloved character in anything that could be construed as political commentary.

After Mr. Michaels made a personal appeal to some friends at the company and let them look at the script, they signed on Friday night. Caroll Spinney, the only actor to play Big Bird since 1969, was told to get his eight-foot yellow-feathered costume ready.

''There's always all this swirl,'' Mr. Michaels said, describing the build-up to the show, ''and then you're fighting to get Big Bird on the phone.''

Political season is high-anxiety season for ''SNL,'' which even in the age of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is known for its definitive parodies of political debates. That includes Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton promoting his record in Arkansas (''Just this year we passed Mississippi to become 41st in the prevention of rickets''), Dana Carvey as both George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot, and a 2000 debate between a pedantic Al Gore and an addled George W. Bush, in which each offered one-word summaries of their campaigns, ''lockbox'' and ''strategery.''

Mr. Michaels and NBC, usually protective about the process of putting together ''SNL,'' allowed access to the show's writers, stars and rehearsals this week as they prepared their debate sketch. Pointing to the more than 70 million people who watched the actual debate, Mr. Michaels said, ''How else can you get anything that can play as comedy where everyone has seen it?''

But the debate itself turned out to be a challenge. There were no big gaffes or obvious springboards for comedy. Instead, the first debate of this election offered up a blizzard of policy details and a lackluster performance from President Obama.

At home Wednesday night, Seth Meyers, one of the show's head writers, watched with increasing concern.

''It's boring enough when they're talking about all this and how it will affect Americans, but when you're sitting there trying to pull comedy out of it, it's really bad,'' Mr. Meyers said. ''There were people on Twitter saying: 'You must be really happy, there's so much in this debate. This is writing itself.' I was like: what debate are you watching?''

The job of turning the debate into comedy gold fell to Jim Downey, the longtime ''SNL'' writer who has created the show's debate parodies since the 1970s. This one, he said, was the hardest he had ever dealt with.

''I can never remember one that didn't have something,'' said Mr. Downey, who watched the debate by himself at home. ''Some kind of thing that was odd or weird.''

Wednesday night and throughout Thursday, Mr. Michaels exchanged e-mails with Mr. Downey, getting the gist of his idea that Mr. Obama would be distracted by the fact that he had forgotten to buy his wife an anniversary present. Mr. Downey's genius, Mr. Michaels said, was summed up in his 2000 sketch that featured the word ''strategery.'' ''Bush didn't say it, but people think he did,'' he said.

Mr. Michaels also watched the post-debate coverage on MSNBC where the hosts Chris Matthews and Ed Schultz reacted strongly to the president's weak performance. ''Rachel Maddow looked like she had just seen a terrible car accident,'' he said. Sensing another opportunity, he discussed it with the show's writers, who, like Mr. Michaels, occupy a warren of offices on the 8th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center.

Mr. Downey, working mostly alone at home on his initial drafts, which he dictates by phone to his assistant, continued to ponder how to create the main debate sketch. By Friday afternoon, when the first run-through was scheduled, the script still was not complete.

''This was the toughest assignment I've ever had on one of these,'' he said later. By late Friday evening, the performers -- Jay Pharoah as Mr. Obama, and Jason Sudeikis as Mitt Romney -- were able to do a partial run-through so that directors and producers could at least work on the staging.

Mr. Michaels, with a still unfinished sketch on his hands, was toying with opening the show with an MSNBC sketch, even though chronologically it would have happened after the debate. Mr. Meyers and the co-head writer Colin Jost stood in front of a run-through of the MSNBC sketch during dress rehearsal, taking notes. Before the live show, an entire character, Ed Schultz, played by Bobby Moynihan, had been cut, and a new joke for Chris Matthews about Mr. Obama needing a Mike Tyson face tattoo for the next debate had been added.

In the late afternoon, Mr. Downey was still agonizing. Worried that his initial idea about the anniversary present was not enough, he had added a voice-over in which Mr. Obama describes the effects of altitude sickness, which Mr. Gore had suggested on Current TV was responsible for Mr. Obama's debate performance. Mr. Downey wanted to have Mr. Obama stagger through the line ''must... hang... on... for Michelle,'' based on the way Superman is typically portrayed in comic books reacting to Kryptonite.

''I have to admit it,'' Mr. Downey said. ''It was because Al Gore suggested the altitude thing.''

The cast did not receive the final version of the sketch until 6 p.m., two hours before the live audience would file in and five-and-a-half hours before millions of viewers, armed with high expectations, would tune in. As Mr. Pharoah and Mr. Sudeikis ran through their lines, Mr. Downey, script in hand and glasses on forehead, stood on the set, closely monitoring the rehearsal and describing in detail what he wanted in the scene.

Mr. Sudeikis worked on delivering Mr. Romney's list of 41 fixes for the economy (which included ''six abrupt reversals of opinion and three lies'') in a modulated tone that allowed the Obama voice-over to be prominent. That was crucial because Mr. Downey had included a moment in which the moderator, Jim Lehrer, (played by a former cast member, Chris Parnell, in a guest appearance) interrupts to ask the president if he just heard Mr. Romney take credit for killing Osama bin Laden.

''The audience couldn't be allowed to hear that Jason hadn't actually said that,'' Mr. Downey said. But he was so unsure of the sketch at this point that he thought of cutting it completely and reassigning the bin Laden line. ''After dress, I said, 'Maybe we should cut the piece out of the show and just take that 25-second exchange and give it to the MSNBC sketch.' ''

That suggestion was not taken. The sketch was trimmed during the break between the two performances, the most difficult technical details were smoothed out and it opened the show. The bin Laden line drew the biggest laugh of the sketch.

''That was probably the best moment,'' Mr. Downey said. ''It was my favorite moment.''

Midway through the live show, Mr. Downey sat in a conference room, watching on a monitor. He looked wrung out from the effort to wring comedy from the debate.

''It's my 60th birthday today,'' he said. ''I didn't know if I felt like spending it in the studio under this incredible pressure.''

During a commercial break, an NBC executive came over to congratulate him on the sketch. Mr. Sudeikis sat and they discussed the prospects of his playing his other recurring character, Joe Biden, in the vice-presidential debate.

That debate is set for Thursday; there is every expectation ''Saturday Night Live'' will have its own version two nights later.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/us/politics/spinning-gaffes-into-gags-live-from-new-york-its-debate-night.html


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: He's no President Obama. He's no Mitt Romney. But this bird was big enough to serve as a stand-in on ''Weekend Update.'' (A1)
Political season is high-anxiety season for ''Saturday Night Live,'' which is known for its parodies of political debates. Above, Jason Sudeikis became Mitt Romney for the debate sketch. At left, cue cards during a rehearsal. Below, a parody skit on MSNBC's reaction to President Obama's debate. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



579 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 8, 2012 Monday


A Regulatory Odd Couple


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 2034 words



HIGHLIGHT: Regulators are getting help policing the rapid-fire markets from an unlikely source - the rapid-fire traders. | Insiders say Twitter is aiming to go public in 2014. | President Obama has a Wall Street problem in Silicon Valley. | The UnitedHealth Group strikes a deal to expand in Brazil.


The Odd Couple: The S.E.C. and High-Frequency Traders  |  Regulators are getting help policing the rapid-fire markets from an unlikely source - the rapid-fire traders. Tradeworx, 45-person high-speed trading firm based in New Jersey, has designed a program that will allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to see every bid and offer on each of the nation's 13 public stock exchanges. "The system, akin to an X-ray machine for the stock market, could enable regulators to detect whether trading firms are overwhelming the market's plumbing when they rapidly submit and cancel orders," Nathaniel Popper and Ben Protess write in The New York Times. While critics contend the program is akin to "the fox guarding the hen house," the trading firm defends its partnership with regulators. "Where else are they going to be able to get these capabilities?" said Manoj Narang, the chief executive of Tradeworx.

Looking Ahead to a Twitter I.P.O.  |  While many social networking companies rushed to the public markets, Twitter seems to be taking the slow, methodical path. Insiders say the company is aiming to go public in 2014, and "after the Facebook fiasco," the chief executive, Dick Costolo, "will have to persuade Wall Street that Twitter, and its share price, could keep rising," Nick Bilton writes in The New York Times.

The I.P.O.'s of Facebook, Zynga and other companies hang like a cloud over the tech industry. There is even speculative chatter in Silicon Valley that Zynga's best hope might be to go private again.

Twitter's employees have reason to be wary of the public market. According to The Wall Street Journal, nonexecutive employees of four big Internet companies that went public in the past 16 months have collectively lost about $9 billion in paper wealth since their I.P.O.'s. At Facebook, the average rank-and-file worker has lost about $2 million on paper since the I.P.O., The Journal says, citing calculations by Equilar.

Tech Titans Warm to Romney  |  President Obama has a Wall Street problem in Silicon Valley. In the start-up capital, Mitt Romney and the Republican party "have made clear inroads," reports Somini Sengupta in The New York Times. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and Facebook investor, has contributed more than $100,000 to Mr. Romney this year, after backing President Obama with a $4,600 donation in 2008. Some tech investors even seem to be echoing Wall Street's complaints. "There needs to be some reaffirmation through words and deeds that engines of innovation are valued," said Robert Nelsen, the managing director of the Seattle-based Arch Ventures.

UnitedHealth to Buy Brazilian Healthcare Company for $4.9 Billion  |  The UnitedHealth Group agreed on Monday to buy a 90 percent stake in Amil Participações for $4.9 billion, in a deal to expand in Brazil.

On the Agenda  |  The bond market is closed for Columbus Day. Earnings season kicks off this week, with Alcoa reporting on Tuesday. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo announce results on Friday.

The founder of the Vanguard Group, John C. Bogle, is on CNBC at 12:30 p.m. Lee C. Buchheit, a top attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton who has been called "the philosopher king of sovereign debt lawyers," is on CNBC at 3 p.m. Ben S. Bernanke is visiting India through Wednesday. The European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are holding a joint conference in Frankfurt to discuss bank financing.

Preparing Europe's Bailout Bazooka  |  The board overseeing the European bailout fund is having its first meeting on Monday in Luxembourg to discuss how to deploy the $650 billion fund, referred to as a "bazooka." It should be interesting, given that there is little consensus on the details. The New York Times writes: "Euro zone member states have not yet agreed on the circumstances under which the fund will be used directly to prop up a country's commercial banks - as Spain would like - to avoid piling even more debt onto national balance sheets. And until the fund starts selling bonds, there is no way of telling whether investors will buy them."

The political tensions are weighing on the market. Stocks fell in Europe on Monday, and the euro fell against the dollar and the yen.

EADS and BAE Face a Wednesday Deadline  |  The two European aerospace giants are up against a Wednesday deadline to file a merger plan. But political wrangling continues. The governments of Britain, France and Germany are haggling over "the best way to balance state interests in the merged company, either through direct ownership of shares or through the granting of special voting rights to the governments, said the people close to the negotiations," The New York Times reports. Germany is now said to be "holding out for more," according to Bloomberg News.

Bernanke on the Nationals  |  The Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, wrote an essay in Saturday's Wall Street Journal professing his devotion to the Washington Nationals, and arguing that politicians could learn something from the baseball team's strategy. As if to prove Mr. Bernanke's thesis, the Nationals eked out a victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday.

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Corporate Leaders Report Little Appetite for Deals  |  A survey by Ernst & Young found that just 25 percent of a group of more than 1,500 executives expected to pursue an acquisition over the next six months, the most pessimistic result since 2009, Reuters reports. REUTERS

Chairwoman of Avon to Step Down  |  Andrea Jung, who resigned last year as chief executive of Avon Products, said she would step down as executive chairwoman at the end of the year, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Staples Seen as a Potential Takeover Target  |  The company is now "cheaper than 93 percent of similar-sized U.S. specialty retailers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg." BLOOMBERG NEWS

Hutchison to Pitch Deal to European Regulators  |  In a private hearing with European regulators on Wednesday, Hutchison 3G will argue for its proposed takeover of Orange Austria, Reuters reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

The Return of Neuberger Berman  |  After being dragged down in the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Neuberger Berman is "freshly invigorated and focused on the essentials in the way disaster survivors tend to be," Barron's writes in its cover story. BARRONS

Investors Flock to Below-Investment-Grade Bonds  |  The popularity of high-yield bonds has pushed yields to record lows, Floyd Norris writes in his column in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

Spanish Bank Depositors Cry Foul  |  Some depositors in Spain, whose banks sold them unusual investments that have fallen in value, are claiming they were not given sufficient information about the securities, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

New Methods in Hacking Attack on Banks  |  The hackers that recently targeted big American banks used "data centers around the world that had been infected with a sophisticated form of malware that can evade detection by antivirus solutions," the Bits blog writes. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

Diverse Strategies Helped 3 Mutual Funds  |  Three of the better-performing mutual funds in the third quarter invested in sectors ranging from all-terrain vehicles to European banks, The New York Times writes. NEW YORK TIMES

Top Goldman and Morgan Stanley Executives Said to Join Firms in Qatar  |  The top executives of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in Qatar have departed for local firms, Reuters reports, citing three unidentified people. REUTERS

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Big Buyouts Remain in Private Equity Hands  |  Some of the biggest deals from the industry's "golden" years have yet to be sold, creating a situation that "could become problematic if not soon rectified," Fortune's Dan Primack writes. FORTUNE

Allscripts Said to Attract Private Equity Bids  |  The Carlyle Group, the Blackstone Group and Silver Lake Management have submitted first-round bids for Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, which is considering a buyout, Bloomberg News reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the talks. BLOOMBERG NEWS

HHI Group to Be Sold for $750 Million  |  The private equity firm American Securities is paying cash for the HHI Group, an auto-parts supplier, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Britain Claims a Bigger Share of European Buyouts  | 
FINANCIAL TIMES

Terra Firma Said to Plan Fund for Renewable Energy  |  The private equity firm Terra Firma is working with the China Development Bank to raise up to $5 billion to invest in the renewable energy sector, Reuters reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation. REUTERS

Zell to Name New Head of International Operations  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

HEDGE FUNDS »

An Activist Investor With a Quiet Style  |  Barry Rosenstein of Jana Partners told The Wall Street Journal: "I get a lot more out of these C.E.O.'s by not embarrassing them publicly, by not being viewed as trying to nail their scalp to the wall." WALL STREET JOURNAL

Fund Reaches Deal With Wet Seal  |  The Clinton Group, which owns about 6.9 percent of Wet Seal, is installing four of its nominees on the retailer's board, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hedge Funds Bid Up Commodity Prices  |  The increase in bullish bets ended a two-week rout, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Chinese Telecom Giant Under Scrutiny  |  Huawei, which is said to be considering an I.P.O., is the subject of an investigation that has "raised concerns about national security, Chinese espionage, and Huawei's murky connections to the Chinese government," reports CBS's "60 Minutes." CBS NEWS

Solar Panel Company Aims to Raise $201 Million in I.P.O.  |  SolarCity, whose chairman is Elon Musk, is looking to challenge investor skepticism about solar companies. BLOOMBERG NEWS

A Third of Prada Managers Depart After I.P.O.  | 
FINANCIAL TIMES

MegaFon of Russia May Announce I.P.O. This Week  | 
BLOOMBERG NEWS

VENTURE CAPITAL »

When Patents Are Used as Weapons  |  In the latest installment in the iEconomy series in The New York Times, Charles Duhigg and Steve Lohr report that the technology industry is said to have been "corrupted by software patents used as destructive weapons." NEW YORK TIMES

Cash Flows Are Critical for Tesla  |  Mitt Romney recently referred to electric-car maker Tesla Motors as a loser. Sales of its sedan are strong, but a look at the company's cash flows suggests it isn't out of the woods just yet. DealBook »

Trinity Ventures Raising $325 Million Fund  | 
TECHCRUNCH

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Lehman Units Settle $38 Billion of Claims  |  The deal was called a "critical milestone" by James Giddens, the trustee liquidating Lehman's brokerage unit, Reuters reports. REUTERS

Wall Street Regulator Ramps Up Enforcement  |  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, once considered a toothless regulator, brought a record number of enforcement cases over the past year, as fines soared. DealBook »

Antitrust Questions in Apple's Use of Maps App  |  Apple's decision to go with its own maps technology in its iPhone seems like what is known as a tying arrangement, writes James B. Stewart in his column in The New York Times. "To the degree that tying arrangements extend the control of a dominant producer, they may violate antitrust laws." NEW YORK TIMES

Law Firms Cut Costs From the Back Office  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Municipal Bond Market's Backward Ways  |  Despite attempts by regulators to force municipal bond issuers to disclose basic financial information, some "don't seem to have gotten the message. More disturbing, regulators don't seem to care," writes Gretchen Morgenson in her column in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

Outspoken Economist Takes an Indian Government Role  |  Raghuram G. Rajan, an economist who has criticized India's policy makers, was named chief economic adviser in the country's Finance Ministry, where he is looking to change India's financial system, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



580 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 8, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION


President faulted on spending, deficits


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, @USATMoore, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A


LENGTH: 424 words


Returning to themes he stressed during Wednesday's well-received debate performance, Mitt Romney criticizes President Obama for growing federal spending and deficits in this ad released Friday.

Script

Narrator: President Obama says he's creating jobs. But he's really creating debt. The facts are clear. Obama's four deficits are the four largest in U.S. history. He's adding almost as much debt as all 43 previous presidents combined. And over 30 cents of every dollar Obama spends is borrowed -- much of it from countries like China. He's not just wasting money. He's borrowing it, and then wasting it. We can't afford four more years.

Visuals

Black and white pictures of Obama, with text, followed by a fast-forward through pictures of previous presidents ending with George Washington on the dollar bill. Moving numerals of a debt counter mount past $10 trillion. At the mention of China, the screen with the dollar bill is bathed in red as the Chinese flag is shown.

Analysis

Holding Obama accountable for $4trillion-plus annual budget deficits is one too many. The deficit had already reached $1.2trillion under President Bush's last budget when Obama was inaugurated in 2009, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The three deficits since have been similarly sized, between $1.2trillion and $1.4trillion, so Obama has not succeeded in cutting the annual deficit in half, as he pledged to in 2009. He has attributed the deficits in part to the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars begun under President Bush, although his administration continued and intensified these costs with a troop surge in Afghanistan. Obama has also said that the recession following the 2008 financial crisis was deeper than he anticipated and defended deficit spending as necessary to combat its effects.

The ad implies that the amount of federal debt that is publicly held has doubled during Obama's term, which is somewhat overstating the case: It has increased 80% to $11.3 trillion from $6.3 trillion, according to the Treasury. The ad also chooses to cite public debt rather than total federal debt, which includes what is owed by the government to the Social Security trust fund. By that measure, federal debt has increased 52% from $10.6trillion in 2009 to $16.2trillion now.

As to the amount the U.S. has borrowed from China -- the most recent Treasury report says that China holds $1.15trillion in U.S. securities, more than any other country. (Japan is right behind, owning $1.12 trillion of U.S. debt.) That is about 10% of the total publicly held debt.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



581 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 8, 2012 Monday 10:55 PM EST


Mitt Romney's claims about 'Obama's defense cuts';
Defense cuts are possibly looming. But the blame for this mess is bipartisan.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 936 words


"$500 Billion In Cuts . . . $500 Billion In Proposed Cuts. Fewer Troops. Fewer Planes. Fewer Ships. 136,000 Fewer Jobs In Virginia."

- messages in a new Romney campaign Web video

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly hammered President Obama for cutting military spending - in last week's debate, in a new Web video and in mailers sent to residents in vote-rich Virginia. "Over 130,000 Virginia jobs and American's national security are on the line," the glossy pamphlet says. "Barack Obama's agenda ignores Virginia's families and security."

The mailer even quotes Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as decrying the impact of the cuts. That's actually a clue that something more complex is going on here - why would Panetta be complaining about his boss's policies?

This is a classic Washington food fight. But any fair reading of the facts would show the blame game is much more complex than Romney's rhetoric.

The Facts

In 2011, Democrats and Republicans had a bitter showdown on whether to raise the ceiling on the national debt. The impasse was ended with bipartisan passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut spending by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years by setting new budget caps for "security" and "nonsecurity" discretionary spending.

"Security" spending included not just the Defense Department but also the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, foreign aid spending, intelligence and other areas. The goal was to allow some flexibility to avoid being locked into a specific number for defense spending.

The law also tasked a "supercommittee" with finding ways to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.2 trillion over 10 years. If the committee failed - which it did - then automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion also would be ordered in "security" and "nonsecurity" spending. This process is known as "sequestration."

 Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), now Romney's running mate, was one of the many Republicans who voted for the agreement. In fact, he was one of its biggest cheerleaders.

"The Budget Control Act represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy," he said in a statement issued after the measure passed.

Romney, for his part, blasted the deal as soon as it was made, saying it "opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table." Romney has also since said that Republican leaders made a mistake in agreeing to this deal.

So why blame Obama for the defense cuts? The Romney campaign points to passages in Bob Woodward's new book, "The Price of Politics," and Glenn Thrush's e-book, "Obama's Last Stand," as showing that Obama was the first to come up with the idea of putting defense cuts on the table. The accounts show that Obama wanted to have leverage to force the Republicans to accept tax hikes for the wealthy.

In other words, it was part of a negotiation. The two sides were haggling over an enforcement trigger that would cause pain on both sides. As The Washington Post previously reported, the Obama administration originally wanted the trigger to hinge on repeal of Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Republicans responded by saying the trigger should be balanced by repeal of the individual mandate in Obama's health-care law.

Ultimately, that was too much for both sides, so they settled on security spending (pain for Republicans) balanced by nonsecurity spending (pain for Democrats). The inside accounts of sausage-making are interesting, but not surprising. Ultimately, the final deal was good enough for top Republicans, including Romney's running mate.

Since then, both sides have played political games over the defense cuts.

Earlier this year, Ryan crafted a bill that would have halted the automatic cuts in defense spending for one year while cutting in other areas. It passed the House in May on a party-line vote, with not a single Democrat voting for it. The Democratic-controlled Senate did not accept the bill - and has not done much else, either, to deal with the problem. Democrats have proposed ending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy as a way to meet the deficit targets in the Budget Control Act, though no vote has ever been taken on a sequestration replacement plan.

The Romney ad and pamphlet cite a study by Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University as showing how "Obama's cuts" would kill more than 130,000 jobs in Virginia. But the study never mentions Obama, and Fuller says both sides are responsible for the scenario he envisages.

"The cuts that I have calculated are a result of sequestration, the Budget Control Act of 2011," Fuller said in an e-mail. "These were in effect approved by all of the Congressmen and Senators voting for the Act and the president as he signed it. There is lots of blame to go around since the Republicans have their finger prints on this Act, too."

The Pinocchio Test

Romney may have always opposed this deal, but it is wrong to lay all of the blame on Obama for the defense cuts in the sequester; the Budget Control Act was a bipartisan deal designed to spread the pain around.

Republicans may now be experiencing buyer's remorse, but that's no excuse for claiming that these are all Obama's defense cuts - especially since the study cited in the ad makes no such claim.

Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



582 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 8, 2012 Monday 10:53 PM EST


Can Democrat Richard Carmona win the Arizona Senate race?


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 802 words


It's been almost 18 years since there was a Democrat in the Senate from Arizona. Hoping to reverse the trend in November, Richard Carmona (D) has moved himself into a close competition against Rep. Jeff Flake (R) with about four weeks left until Election Day. But he faces glaring challenges: the Republican tilt of the state, and the consistency of the GOP advantage there in recent years.

On paper, it would be tough to find a better recruit for Arizona than Carmona. He's a decorated Vietnam War veteran who has also worked in law enforcement and public health. He served as surgeon general under George W. Bush, and was recruited by President Obama to join the Arizona race, lending credence to the claim that he isn't beholden to one party all the time. And he is Hispanic, in a state with a sizable - and growing - Latino population.

Republicans have zeroed in on the Obama connection, a potentially damaging link for Carmona, with polling of Arizona showing Mitt Romney leading at the presidential level. A recent Flake ad calls Carmona "Barack Obama's rubber stamp."

The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried Arizona was 1996, when Bill Clinton won reelection in a national landslide. In the three elections since, the Democratic nominee's share of the vote has consistently hovered around 44 percent (43.9 percent in 2000, 43.8 percent in 2004, and 44.6 percent in 2008, the year home state Sen. John McCain was the Republican nominee).

Carmona has carefully toed the line in his own message, attentive to the pitfalls of doing or saying anything that would make him look too liberal. In a recent ad, he says "Republicans  and Democrats both got it wrong" on health care.

But try as he might to craft an independent image, Carmona is, at the end of the day, the Democratic nominee. In a state that leans to the right, it's a tough label to overcome. But in recent years, Democrats have been increasingly optimistic about competing in Arizona. With Republicans adopting hard-line postures on immigration in the state (including 2010's controversial SB 1070 measure), Democrats believe they can build increasing support among the state's growing Hispanic population.

So they have devoted more resources and attention to Arizona. But it's not yet clear what the net result will be. If Obama's share of the Hispanic vote increases dramatically in Arizona this year, it would represent a departure from the consistency of the past two elections. 

Exit polling data show that in 2008 and 2004, the Democratic presidential nominee received the same share of the Hispanic vote in Arizona - 56 percent. The Hispanic share of the electorate, however rose from 12 percent to 16 percent between 2004 and 2008, according to the exit poll data.

The pace at which Democrats are spending money underscores their seriousness about competing in the Arizona Senate race. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recently released an ad casting Flake's record on women's issues in an unflattering light and has committed more than $1 million to the airwaves in addition to the $500,000 in coordinated money it has spent with Carmona's campaign.

Flake faced a Republican primary that cost him more than what was reflected in the Election Day vote tally. He ran against Wil Cardon, a self-funder who proved to be no match at the polls in late August. But Cardon's wealth forced Flake to keep pace by burning though his own campaign cash at a faster-than-ideal pace. Democrats took advantage, swamping the airwaves during the three weeks after the primary election.

Meanwhile, Flake and his allies have sought to take some of the sheen off of Carmona's profile. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is spending $573,000 on a buy this week, and the anti-tax Club for Growth has already been on the air attacking Carmona.

For his part, the congressman who has crafted a reputation as a strict fiscal conservative in the House used a recent ad to point out a debt increase during Carmona's tenure at the helm of the Pima Country health system. And reports about Carmona's former boss criticizing his temperament could surface as an issue during the stretch run.

Both sides are aware of the importance of Thursday, when early voting kicks off, in the midst of a period when polling shows a very close race. Early voting is very popular in Arizona, and a good ground organization is the key to campaigns that capitalize on its appeal. Carmona is enlisting the help of former president Bill Clinton at a get-out-the-vote rally Wednesday.

Democrats deserve credit for expanding the Senate map and competing in Arizona. But the fundamentals of the state still favor the GOP. That may ultimately mean that Democrats have to wait until a future election before they can claim an unlikely statewide victory in the Southwest.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



583 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 8, 2012 Monday 10:03 PM EST


Rehberg raises $2.4 million in the third quarter, edging out Tester


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 521 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

How party ID explains Romney's "surge"

8 takeaways from the new Pew poll

Pew poll: Romney takes four-point lead among likely voters

Can Democrat Richard Carmona win the Arizona Senate race?

Jindal, Christie set to lead RGA in 2013, 2014

Find out how rich (or poor) your Member of Congress is - in 1 amazing chart

House majority math still doesn't add up for Democrats

The "Saturday Night Live" version of the first presidential debate

Mitt Romney and the (foreign policy) vision thing

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Mitt Romney slammed President Obama's leadership in the Middle East during a major foreign policy speech Monday morning. "We cannot support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds," Romney said. Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the speech Romney's seventh attempt to reboot his foreign policy vision.

* Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) raised $2.4 million during the third quarter, meaning he edged out Sen. Jon Tester (D), who last week announced hauling in $2.3 million. Rehberg ended the period with $1.7 million in the bank, while Tester finished with $1.3 million.

* The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action released a new TV ad hitting Romney over education. "If you take away early childhood education, slash K-12 funding and cut college aid for middle class families they won't go far. Yet that's exactly what Mitt Romney wants to do," says the narrator. 

* Freshman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) leads Democratic challenger Pat Kretilow 51 percent to 40 percent in a Republican poll conducted by Glen Bolger for American Action Network. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* The National Rifle Association is stepping up its involvement in the campaign. The NRA released an anti-Obama TV ad on Monday, and also endorsed Rep. Todd Akin (R) in the Missouri Senate race and Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) in his race against Republican challenger Keith Rothfus. 

* Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine and former senator George Allen (R-Va.) will debate tonight at 8 p.m. The Post's Virginia Politics Blog will live-tweet and live-stream it.  

* Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) said Romney's widely praised debate performance last week "raised the bar" for him to do well against Vice President Biden on Thursday.  

* Missouri Republican gubernatorial nominee Dave Spence is out with a new contrast ad called "Choice" that misspells the word "governor" in one of the captions directing viewers to "Spenceforgoverner.com."

* House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) says the central issue of the 2012 campaign is taxes. 

THE FIX MIX:

 When life gives you lemons...

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



584 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 8, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


An Obama overstatement fills a Romney vacuum


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 566 words


"President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney's economic plan. The latest? Not telling the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan."

- A new Mitt Romney campaign ad

"So lowering the rates, as Mitt Romney has said he would do, to 20 percent: $2.7 trillion over 10 years. Eliminating the AMT [alternative minium tax]: $700 billion. Repealing high-income payroll tax: $300 billion. Ending estate tax: $150 billion. Lowering the corporate rate from 35 to 25 [percent]: $1.1 trillion. That adds up to $4.8 trillion. If you factor in interest for additional borrowing, you get to $5 trillion."

- Jennifer Psaki, the Obama campaign's traveling press secretary, on Sunday 

Five trillion! It's such a big figure.

President Obama says Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years; Mitt Romney adamantly denies it. He has a new ad slamming Obama for this claim - while repeating a charge that Obama has a secret plan to raise taxes that we already deemed worthy of three Pinocchios.

So the question arises: Is the Obama claim accurate?

The facts

Obama spokeswoman Psaki laid out the math to reporters Sunday. There's just one problem: Romney also has said he will make his plan "revenue-neutral" by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, much as Ronald Reagan did when he passed his 1986 tax reform.

And there's another problem: Romney has not provided many details about which deductions he would eliminate. He has suggested that the home mortgage deduction, charitable contributions and employer-paid health insurance might be protected; he has also indicated he is thinking of some sort of cap on deductions.

Moreover, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has analyzed the specifics of Romney's plan thus far released and concluded that the numbers aren't there to make it revenue-neutral. In last week's debate, Romney countered that "six other studies" have found that not to be the case, but those studies actually do not provide much evidence that the proposal - as sketchy as it is - would be revenue-neutral without making unrealistic assumptions.

Given the uncertainty, the Obama campaign has assumed the worst about Romney's plan - that it would mean higher taxes for middle-class Americans - even though, as Romney has stated, there is no chance he would try to implement such a plan as president. Moreover, the director of the Tax Policy Center has taken issue with Obama campaign ads making such claims, saying the organization's study merely proves that Romney's numbers don't add up.

Romney appears to want to have his cake and eat it, too- getting credit for cutting rates without detailing exactly what the impact would be for taxpayers once revenue is recaptured by curtailing tax deductions.

The Pinocchio test

By itself, Team Obama's $5 trillion claim is an overstatement. Clearly the campaign recognizes that Romney hopes to cut the cost of the tax cut, because it also slams him for the supposed impact of eliminating deductions. So the figure reflects just half of the story about the plan - just as Republicans complain about the cost of "Obamacare" without acknowledging the tax hikes used to make it revenue-neutral in the first 10 years.

Still, Romney has left himself open to criticism because he has not specified how he would fill the $5 trillion hole created by his tax plans. If he released fuller details, he would be on firmer ground to complain about Obama's assumptions.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



585 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 8, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Romney hits Obama's 'excuses'


BYLINE: Jerry Markon;Bill Turque;Kimberly Kindy


SECTION: A section; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 935 words


PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - Mitt Romney painted a dark vision of a second Obama term on Sunday, telling more than 10,000 supporters at a rally here that the president would raise taxes on the middle class, weaken the military and explode the deficit if reelected.

"I don't want four more years like the last four years," Romney, speaking in a rapid-fire tone as rain threatened from a gray sky, said to chants of "USA! USA!"

Before a boisterous crowd spread out on a grassy field next to the town square, Romney tried to capitalize on his momentum from his widely praised debate performance Wednesday.

"We had a little debate earlier this week, and I enjoyed myself," he said, adding that President Obama has been making excuses for his own performance ever since. "Now of course, days later, we're hearing his excuses, and next January, we'll be watching him leave the White House for the last time," Romney said.

He also expressed confidence that he would capture this critical state and its 29 electoral votes, saying to loud cheers, "We're going to win in Florida, and we're going to take back the White House.''

After his 20-minute speech, Romney walked across the street to the Tin Fish restaurant, where the owner said he and his wife, Ann, were picking up grilled fish and chicken. The cash register was adorned with two Romney-Ryan stickers, and the Republican elephant symbol dangled from strings just behind the counter.

Meanwhile, Obama had no public appearances Sunday but held two fundraisers in Los Angeles.

Addressing a raucous crowd at the Nokia Theatre, Obama continued in the same combative voice he has employed since last week's debate, also offering a bit of self-deprecating reflection on a performance widely described as listless and uninspired. Praising the night's musical acts, including Stevie Wonder and Katy Perry, he said: "These guys perform flawlessly night after night. I can't always say the same."

Later, Obama acknowledged - without offering specifics - that he and his administration had made missteps.

"We made some mistakes," he said. "We goofed up. I goofed up. But the American people carried us forward."

Obama continued to assail Romney's tax plan as one that would increase the deficit by $5 trillion. He also ridiculed one of the specific cuts Romney offered at the debate, eliminating funding for PBS.

"Don't worry - someone is finally cracking down on Big Bird," he said. "Elmo has made a run for the border."

Obama began his evening with a small group of longtime donors at the home of entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, where Obama was joined by former president Bill Clinton. His campaign called the gathering a "thank-you event."

The president wrapped up his night at Wolfgang Puck's WP24 restaurant, on the 24th floor of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in downtown Los Angeles. With 150 people expected at a cost of $25,000 per person, that event alone could have raised $3.75 million.

Obama's fundraising efforts were a topic on the Sunday political talk shows. On Saturday, the campaign announced it had raised $181 million in September, a near-record haul that pushed the overall total for the campaign to nearly $1 billion.

Seeking to play down the importance of fundraising at this stage in the campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday called Obama's September fundraising "impressive" and said he did not know whether Romney and the RNC will match it. "I think we all understand this race isn't going to come down to money," Priebus said on CNN's "State of the Union," adding: "This is going to come down to work on the ground."

From the Obama campaign, senior advisers hit the Sunday shows in an effort to take the sheen off Romney's performance at the first presidential debate, saying it was rooted in dishonesty.

"Governor Romney had a masterful theatrical performance just this past week, but the underpinnings and foundations of that performance were fundamentally dishonest," Robert Gibbs said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "Look - he walked away from the central tenet of his economic theory by saying he had no idea what the president was talking about. "

Campaign adviser David Axelrod, on CBS's "Face the Nation," said, "I would say that [Romney] was dishonest."

Aboard Air Force One, the Obama campaign also tried to undercut Romney's tax proposal. Campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki, using what she called "back-of-the-notecard math," maintained that the combination of taxes Romney is willing to lower (including income tax rates, the alternative minimum tax, high-income payroll taxes and corporate income tax) add up - with no new off-setting revenues - to $5 trillion in additional debt.

Both candidates are focusing on truthfulness in their latest television ads.

Romney's campaign unveiled a new ad over the weekend, saying Obama is not telling the truth when he says Romney wants to cut $5 trillion in taxes. The campaign has not said where the ad will run.

Obama's campaign is running a new ad called "Dishonest," which says Romney grossly misrepresented his own positions on taxes, as well as Obama's, during last week's debate.

On Monday, the president is scheduled to announce the establishment of the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument at the National Chavez Center in Keene, Calif. He is also scheduled to attend two campaign fundraising events in San Francisco. Romney is scheduled to deliver a foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington.

markonj@washpost.com

turqueb@washpost.com

kindyk@washpost.com

Turque reported from Los Angeles, Kindy from Washington.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



586 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 8, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Allen backers shift ads to taxes


BYLINE: Ben Pershing


SECTION: Metro; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 801 words


Turn on a TV in Virginia and there's one message that Republicans want voters to hear: Timothy M. Kaine loves taxes.

With just weeks before the commonwealth's marquee U.S. Senate contest, Kaine's opponent, fellow former governor George Allen (R), and conservative groups are shifting their strategy to increasingly link the Democrat to tax increases. They are betting millions of dollars in advertising that the issue is Kaine's biggest vulnerability.

Republicans more frequently attacked Kaine earlier in the race for his ties to President Obama, and connected him to controversial administration policies such as health-care reform and the economic stimulus package. With Obama running competitively in Virginia against Mitt Romney (R), some observers say it is obvious why Republicans would stop twinning Kaine with the president.

"If you make your Senate race about Obama and Obama wins the state, that's an 'uh-oh moment' that generally doesn't end well," said Chris LaCivita, a veteran Virginia Republican consultant.

Despite the campaign money pouring into the Virginia contest - including $10.3 million from related GOP groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS - it's unclear whether the Republican message is working. Eight of the last nine publicly released polls show Kaine in the lead (although some were within the margin of error), and there's little evidence that Kaine's personal popularity is eroding.

A Washington Post poll released last month found 54 percent of registered voters had a favorable impression of Kaine, up from 41 percent in May. Other surveys have ranked his favorability in the 40s, but none have suggested that the number is dropping.

The Post poll also found just 5 percent of voters said taxes was the most important issue in the Senate race, while 29 percent said the economy and 10 percent cited jobs and unemployment.

But Republicans say they are focusing on taxes because they can link Kaine's campaign proposals to his tenure in Richmond - an issue that may come up at a second candidates debate Monday night.

"A lot of it has to do with a significant portion of his record as governor," said Nate Hodson, a Crossroads spokesman. "What would lead him to behave any differently in the U.S. Senate?"

One recent Crossroads ad accused Kaine of wanting to raise taxes because he's "addicted" to spending. Other Crossroads spots, nominally about energy plans or education cuts, go back to the allegation that Kaine is a serial tax-raiser. Last month, anonymous - and possibly illegal - text messages sent to some Virginians accused Kaine of backing "a radical new tax plan."

The Allen campaign, which has targeted much of its advertising on female voters with positive messages about the Republican, jumped on the tax issue after Kaine said at a Sept. 20 debate in McLean that he was "open to a proposal that has some minimum tax level for everyone."

Within days, Allen was up with an ad accusing Kaine of supporting "raising taxes on everyone," though Kaine had only said that he was willing to discuss a minimum rate - not that he endorsed it - that would raise taxes only for those not meeting the new threshold.

"Having exhausted other lines of attack, George Allen and his allies are growing increasingly desperate by knowingly promoting false claims on television and via anonymous text messages that misrepresent Tim Kaine's proposals," said Kaine spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. (Allen has denied any role in the text messages.)

The Kaine campaign, which cited data from the Tax Foundation to show that the overall tax burden was lower under Kaine's governorship than Allen's, thinks the tax issue can actually be more of a weakness for Allen.

Allen favors extending all the Bush-era tax cuts, even though national surveys have shown majorities of Americans - 65 percent in an August Washington Post/Kaiser poll - favor Obama's proposal to let the cuts expire on incomes over $250,000. Kaine supports letting taxes go up on incomes over $500,000.

Allen wants to close the deficit without raising any taxes and while averting planned defense cuts, a strategy that Democrats and some experts find implausible. And while Allen has promoted the idea of a flatter tax code with fewer deductions, he has not specified the rate or which deductions he would eliminate.

Obama, meanwhile, gets mentioned in ads far less often now than at the start of the Senate contest. In last month's Post poll, 50 percent of registered voters said Obama would not be a factor in their Senate race vote, while 28 percent said they'd use their Senate vote to express support for the president and 20 percent to express opposition.

Linking Kaine and Obama made sense early on, LaCivita said, but "clearly it's not the straw that's going to break the camel's back."

Ben.Pershing@wpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



587 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 8, 2012 Monday 5:35 PM EST


Ad Watch: Obama attacks Romney's Libya response


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 100 words


Obama for America, "Policy"

What it says: "If this is how he handles the world now just think what Mitt Romney might do as president."

What it means: Romney is delivering a major foreign policy speech today. This ad is part of the Obama campaign's attempt to undercut the Republican candidate's message by arguing that Romney's gaffes give him no credibility on world affairs. 

Who will see it: The ad is airing in Virginia, where Romney is giving his speech. 

Find out who's spending how much and where with our new campaign ads interactive.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



588 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 8, 2012 Monday 4:14 PM EST


Both sides hate financial sector - in ads;
If political advertising is any measure, the banking and finance sector is not very popular at the moment.


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


LENGTH: 288 words


If political advertising is any measure, the banking and finance sector is not very popular at the moment.

A new study by Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks political ads, found that about $1 of every $10 spent on political ads between mid-April and mid-September made negative references to the financial services sector or specific financial firms.

The leading bugaboo was Bain Capital, the private equity firm co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, which was the focus of about about $26 million in TV broadcast ad spending. President Obama's reelection campaign and a pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action, have focused on Romney's tenure at Bain in many of their advertisements.

Another $65 million was spent by both parties on ads decrying the banking business or targeting specific financial institutions, including AIG, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citi and Goldman Sachs, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A total of $91 million out of $897 million in estimated political ad spending was focused on the finance sector, the analysis found.

"The tactic has been bipartisan," CMAG vice president Elizabeth Wilner said in a news release. "Candidates on both sides have been criticized for supporting 'bailouts,' 'Wall Street bonuses' or private accounts for Social Security, among other angles."

The firm also notes that the volume has been increasing as Election Day nears. Since the end of the study period on Sept. 16, CMAG said it identified 70 additional unique ads in down-ballot races making "critical references" to the financial services sector.

The study was conducted analyzing ad tracking data from April 10 to Sept. 16. The findings were published as a white paper for AdAge magazine.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



589 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 8, 2012 Monday 4:06 PM EST


Mitt Romney and the (foreign policy) vision thing


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1061 words


Foreign policy isn't going to decide the 2012 election; Mitt Romney and his campaign team know that. So why is Romney using a precious day - there are only 29 days left before the election - to deliver a foreign policy speech today at the Virginia Military Institute?

Simple: Romney has yet to demonstrate to undecided voters that he (a) is ready, willing and able to represent America on the world stage and (b) has some sort of broader sense of how he would do so. Call it the vision thing - and Romney and his team know he still has some work to do to convince undecideds on that front.

Whether it was the decidedly mixed press coverage he received during his trip to Britain, Israel and Poland or the criticism he took for his statement following the attack in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens dead (Romney's statement came before Stevens's death was confirmed), Romney has had an unsteady run of things when it comes to matters of foreign policy.

If the excerpts released by the campaign early this morning are any indication, Romney plans to lay out his leadership vision in comparison (and contrast) with what President Obama has done in his first four years in office.

On the Middle East, Romney is set to say: "I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy."

On trade: "The president has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years. I will reverse that failure."

And on the big picture of defining America's place in the world, Romney is set to make a not-so-subtle reference to the infamous phrase "leading from behind": "I believe that if America does not lead, others will - others who do not share our interests and our values - and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us. America's security and the cause of freedom cannot afford four more years like the last four years."

There is some evidence in polling that suggests opportunity for Romney here. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 49 percent of registered voters approved of Obama's handling of foreign policy while 48 percent disapproved. Those numbers are down from earlier this year, when the killing of Osama bin Laden made foreign policy a strength for Obama.

And yet, when it comes to a choice between Obama and Romney on handling foreign affairs, 49 percent of registered voters said they trusted the incumbent more, while 44 trusted Romney - a margin that, encouragingly for the Romney team, has narrowed since Post-ABC polling done in the spring.

Voters - especially at times of economic crisis (or at least anxiety) - don't vote on foreign policy. But they do vote for a leader and want/need to believe that their president understands the complexities of the world and has a plan to solve them.

Romney isn't there. He has to hope that today's speech, coupled with a strong showing in the Oct. 22 foreign policy-focused presidential debate, convinces voters he's got the vision to lead on the world stage.

Obama team hits back early: All eyes will be on Romney today, but Democrats aren't content to let Romney dominate the news. As early as Sunday, they were already issuing a sort of prebuttal, and on Monday, the Obama campaign launched a foreign policy attack ad.

The ad rehashes Romney's overseas stumbles and says he has failed the commander-in-chief test.

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Sunday that Romney has been "an unmitigated disaster on foreign policy every time he's dipped his toe in the foreign policy waters."

"Just as a refresher, this is the same guy who when he went overseas on his trip, the only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase," Psaki said.

Obama pokes fun as debate performance: Sometimes the best medicine is a little self-deprecation.

Obama tried that cure Sunday, making light of his debate performance while appearing on-stage with entertainment icons in Los Angeles.

"They're such great friends, and they just perform flawlessly night after night," Obama said. "I can't always say the same."

This is the Obama campaign acknowledging the narrative that has been written about the debate. On Sunday, they set about trying to move the focus from style to substance, with Robert Gibbs, for instance, saying Romney's presentation was "masterful" but his content was "dishonest."

Fixbits:

Obama pokes fun at his debate performance.

Romney's crowds grow after his strong debate last week. 

Paul Ryan compares Romney to Ronald Reagan.

A new Selzer and Company poll of Colorado shows Obama leading Romney 47 percent to 43 percent.

A new poll from a Democratic-leaning pollster in Nevada shows Sen. Dean Heller (R) with a two-point advantage on Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) and Republicans leading the state's two competitive House races.

A new Western New England University poll shows Elizabeth Warren (D) leading Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) 50 percent to 45 percent. Meanwhile, a new poll from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (conducted by Harstad Strategic Research) shows Warren at 50 percent and Brown at 44 percent.

Connecticut Senate candidates Rep. Chris Murphy (D) and Linda McMahon debated Sunday.

The Chicago Tribune editorial board endorses Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) and Democrat Tammy Duckworth, who is running against Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.). 

A Siena College poll shows Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) tied with Republican Chris Collins.

A new Tarrance Group poll for the fiscally conservative group Public Notice shows 57 percent of Americans think Obama would use money from a tax increase for more government programs, while 32 percent think he would use it to pay down the national debt and deficit.

Jon Stewart debates Bill O'Reilly. And here's the video.

Must-reads:

"30 Days Out: Fundamentals Still Favor Obama" - Amy Walter, ABC News

"Is Obama overrated as a candidate?" - Chris Cillizza, Washington Post

"Capitol Assets: Congress's wealthiest mostly shielded from effects of deep recession" - Dan Keating, Scott Higham, Kimberly Kindy and David S. Fallis, Washington Post

"In Va. Senate race, anti-Kaine message focuses more on taxes, less on Obama" - Ben Pershing, Washington Post

"Supreme Court receives outpouring of conflicting views on affirmative action" - Robert Barnes, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



590 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 8, 2012 Monday
Met 2 Edition


Romney hits Obama's 'excuses'


BYLINE: Jerry Markon;Bill Turque;Kimberly Kindy


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 933 words


DATELINE: PORT ST. LUCIE, FLA.


PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. - Mitt Romney painted a dark vision of a second Obama term on Sunday, telling more than 10,000 supporters at a rally here that the president would raise taxes on the middle class, weaken the military and explode the deficit if reelected.

"I don't want four more years like the last four years," Romney, speaking in a rapid-fire tone as rain threatened from a gray sky, said to chants of "USA! USA!"

Before a boisterous crowd spread out on a grassy field next to the town square, Romney tried to capitalize on his momentum from his widely praised debate performance Wednesday.

"We had a little debate earlier this week, and I enjoyed myself," he said, adding that President Obama has been making excuses for his own performance ever since. "Now of course, days later, we're hearing his excuses, and next January, we'll be watching him leave the White House for the last time," Romney said.

He also expressed confidence that he would capture this critical state and its 29 electoral votes, saying to loud cheers, "We're going to win in Florida, and we're going to take back the White House.''

After his 20-minute speech, Romney walked across the street to the Tin Fish restaurant, where the owner said he and his wife, Ann, were picking up grilled fish and chicken. The cash register was adorned with two Romney-Ryan stickers, and the Republican elephant symbol dangled from strings just behind the counter.

Meanwhile, Obama had no public appearances Sunday but held two fundraisers in Los Angeles.

Addressing a raucous crowd at the Nokia Theatre, Obama continued in the same combative voice he has employed since last week's debate, also offering a bit of self-deprecating reflection on a performance widely described as listless and uninspired. Praising the night's musical acts, including Stevie Wonder and Katy Perry, he said: "These guys perform flawlessly night after night. I can't always say the same."

Later, Obama acknowledged - without offering specifics - that he and his administration had made missteps.

"We made some mistakes," he said. "We goofed up. I goofed up. But the American people carried us forward."

Obama continued to assail Romney's tax plan as one that would increase the deficit by $5 trillion. He also ridiculed one of the specific cuts Romney offered at the debate, eliminating funding for PBS.

"Don't worry - someone is finally cracking down on Big Bird," he said. "Elmo has made a run for the border."

Obama began his evening with a small group of longtime donors at the home of entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, where Obama was joined by former president Bill Clinton. His campaign called the gathering a "thank-you event."

The president wrapped up his night at Wolfgang Puck's WP24 restaurant, on the 24th floor of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in downtown Los Angeles. With 150 people expected at a cost of $25,000 per person, that event alone could have raised $3.75 million.

Obama's fundraising efforts were a topic on the Sunday political talk shows. On Saturday, the campaign announced it had raised $181 million in September, a near-record haul that pushed the overall total for the campaign to nearly $1 billion.

Seeking to play down the importance of fundraising at this stage in the campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday called Obama's September fundraising "impressive" and said he did not know whether Romney and the RNC will match it. "I think we all understand this race isn't going to come down to money," Priebus said on CNN's "State of the Union," adding: "This is going to come down to work on the ground."

From the Obama campaign, senior advisers hit the Sunday shows in an effort to take the sheen off Romney's performance at the first presidential debate, saying it was rooted in dishonesty.

"Governor Romney had a masterful theatrical performance just this past week, but the underpinnings and foundations of that performance were fundamentally dishonest," Robert Gibbs said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "Look - he walked away from the central tenet of his economic theory by saying he had no idea what the president was talking about. "

Campaign adviser David Axelrod, on CBS's "Face the Nation," said, "I would say that [Romney] was dishonest."

Aboard Air Force One, the Obama campaign also tried to undercut Romney's tax proposal. Campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki, using what she called "back-of-the-notecard math," maintained that the combination of taxes Romney is willing to lower (including income tax rates, the alternative minimum tax, high-income payroll taxes and corporate income tax) add up - with no new off-setting revenues - to $5 trillion in additional debt.

Both candidates are focusing on truthfulness in their latest television ads.

Romney's campaign unveiled a new ad over the weekend, saying Obama is not telling the truth when he says Romney wants to cut $5 trillion in taxes. The campaign has not said where the ad will run.

Obama's campaign is running a new ad called "Dishonest," which says Romney grossly misrepresented his own positions on taxes, as well as Obama's, during last week's debate.

On Monday, the president is scheduled to announce the establishment of the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument at the National Chavez Center in Keene, Calif. He is also scheduled to attend two campaign fundraising events in San Francisco. Romney is scheduled to deliver a foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington.

markonj@washpost.com

turqueb@washpost.com

kindyk@washpost.com

Turque reported from Los Angeles, Kindy from Washington.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



591 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 8, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


Allen backers shift ads to taxes


BYLINE: Ben Pershing


SECTION: METRO; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 798 words


Turn on a TV in Virginia and there's one message that Republicans want voters to hear: Timothy M. Kaine loves taxes.

With just weeks before the commonwealth's marquee U.S. Senate contest, Kaine's opponent, fellow former governor George Allen (R), and conservative groups are shifting their strategy to increasingly link the Democrat to tax increases. They are betting millions of dollars in advertising that the issue is Kaine's biggest vulnerability.

Republicans more frequently attacked Kaine earlier in the race for his ties to President Obama, and connected him to controversial administration policies such as health-care reform and the economic stimulus package. With Obama running competitively in Virginia against Mitt Romney (R), some observers say it is obvious why Republicans would stop twinning Kaine with the president.

"If you make your Senate race about Obama and Obama wins the state, that's an 'uh-oh moment' that generally doesn't end well," said Chris LaCivita, a veteran Virginia Republican consultant.

Despite the campaign money pouring into the Virginia contest - including $10.3 million from related GOP groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS - it's unclear whether the Republican message is working. Eight of the last nine publicly released polls show Kaine in the lead (although some were within the margin of error), and there's little evidence that Kaine's personal popularity is eroding.

A Washington Post poll released last month found 54 percent of registered voters had a favorable impression of Kaine, up from 41 percent in May. Other surveys have ranked his favorability in the 40s, but none have suggested that the number is dropping.

The Post poll also found just 5 percent of voters said taxes was the most important issue in the Senate race, while 29 percent said the economy and 10 percent cited jobs and unemployment.

But Republicans say they are focusing on taxes because they can link Kaine's campaign proposals to his tenure in Richmond - an issue that may come up at a second candidates debate Monday night.

"A lot of it has to do with a significant portion of his record as governor," said Nate Hodson, a Crossroads spokesman. "What would lead him to behave any differently in the U.S. Senate?"

One recent Crossroads ad accused Kaine of wanting to raise taxes because he's "addicted" to spending. Other Crossroads spots, nominally about energy plans or education cuts, go back to the allegation that Kaine is a serial tax-raiser. Last month, anonymous - and possibly illegal - text messages sent to some Virginians accused Kaine of backing "a radical new tax plan."

The Allen campaign, which has targeted much of its advertising on female voters with positive messages about the Republican, jumped on the tax issue after Kaine said at a Sept. 20 debate in McLean that he was "open to a proposal that has some minimum tax level for everyone."

Within days, Allen was up with an ad accusing Kaine of supporting "raising taxes on everyone," though Kaine had only said that he was willing to discuss a minimum rate - not that he endorsed it - that would raise taxes only for those not meeting the new threshold.

"Having exhausted other lines of attack, George Allen and his allies are growing increasingly desperate by knowingly promoting false claims on television and via anonymous text messages that misrepresent Tim Kaine's proposals," said Kaine spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. (Allen has denied any role in the text messages.)

The Kaine campaign, which cited data from the Tax Foundation to show that the overall tax burden was lower under Kaine's governorship than Allen's, thinks the tax issue can actually be more of a weakness for Allen.

Allen favors extending all the Bush-era tax cuts, even though national surveys have shown majorities of Americans - 65 percent in an August Washington Post/Kaiser poll - favor Obama's proposal to let the cuts expire on incomes over $250,000. Kaine supports letting taxes go up on incomes over $500,000.

Allen wants to close the deficit without raising any taxes and while averting planned defense cuts, a strategy that Democrats and some experts find implausible. And while Allen has promoted the idea of a flatter tax code with fewer deductions, he has not specified the rate or which deductions he would eliminate.

Obama, meanwhile, gets mentioned in ads far less often now than at the start of the Senate contest. In last month's Post poll, 50 percent of registered voters said Obama would not be a factor in their Senate race vote, while 28 percent said they'd use their Senate vote to express support for the president and 20 percent to express opposition.

Linking Kaine and Obama made sense early on, LaCivita said, but "clearly it's not the straw that's going to break the camel's back."

Ben.Pershing@wpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



592 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 8, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


An Obama overstatement fills a Romney vacuum


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 566 words


"President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney's economic plan. The latest? Not telling the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan."

- A new Mitt Romney campaign ad 

"So lowering the rates, as Mitt Romney has said he would do, to 20 percent: $2.7 trillion over 10 years. Eliminating the AMT [alternative minium tax]: $700 billion. Repealing high-income payroll tax: $300 billion. Ending estate tax: $150 billion. Lowering the corporate rate from 35 to 25 [percent]: $1.1 trillion. That adds up to $4.8 trillion. If you factor in interest for additional borrowing, you get to $5 trillion."

- Jennifer Psaki, the Obama campaign's traveling press secretary, on Sunday

Five trillion! It's such a big figure.

President Obama says Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years; Mitt Romney adamantly denies it. He has a new ad slamming Obama for this claim - while repeating a charge that Obama has a secret plan to raise taxes that we already deemed worthy of three Pinocchios.

So the question arises: Is the Obama claim accurate?

The facts

Obama spokeswoman Psaki laid out the math to reporters Sunday. There's just one problem: Romney also has said he will make his plan "revenue-neutral" by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, much as Ronald Reagan did when he passed his 1986 tax reform.

And there's another problem: Romney has not provided many details about which deductions he would eliminate. He has suggested that the home mortgage deduction, charitable contributions and employer-paid health insurance might be protected; he has also indicated he is thinking of some sort of cap on deductions.

Moreover, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has analyzed the specifics of Romney's plan thus far released and concluded that the numbers aren't there to make it revenue-neutral. In last week's debate, Romney countered that "six other studies" have found that not to be the case, but those studies actually do not provide much evidence that the proposal - as sketchy as it is - would be revenue-neutral without making unrealistic assumptions.

Given the uncertainty, the Obama campaign has assumed the worst about Romney's plan - that it would mean higher taxes for middle-class Americans - even though, as Romney has stated, there is no chance he would try to implement such a plan as president. Moreover, the director of the Tax Policy Center has taken issue with Obama campaign ads making such claims, saying the organization's study merely proves that Romney's numbers don't add up.

Romney appears to want to have his cake and eat it, too- getting credit for cutting rates without detailing exactly what the impact would be for taxpayers once revenue is recaptured by curtailing tax deductions.

The Pinocchio test

By itself, Team Obama's $5 trillion claim is an overstatement. Clearly the campaign recognizes that Romney hopes to cut the cost of the tax cut, because it also slams him for the supposed impact of eliminating deductions. So the figure reflects just half of the story about the plan - just as Republicans complain about the cost of "Obamacare" without acknowledging the tax hikes used to make it revenue-neutral in the first 10 years.

Still, Romney has left himself open to criticism because he has not specified how he would fill the $5 trillion hole created by his tax plans. If he released fuller details, he would be on firmer ground to complain about Obama's assumptions.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



593 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Some in G.O.P. Choose to Return to Shunned Senate Hopeful's Corner


BYLINE: By JOHN ELIGON


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 18


LENGTH: 1273 words


KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- For establishment Republicans, it is decision time in the Missouri Senate race.

Should they return to Representative Todd Akin's corner?

Many quickly withdrew their support for Mr. Akin weeks ago after his controversial comments about abortion and belief that victims of ''legitimate rape'' have a biological mechanism to fight off pregnancy, hoping to force him aside so another Republican candidate could battle the Democratic incumbent, Senator Claire McCaskill.

But Mr. Akin called their bluff. He stayed in the race, reckoning that election math would oblige them to stick with him.

Now, with Mr. Akin's name legally bound to the ballot, the election approaching and new polling data presenting a clearer idea of his chances, Republicans are deliberating whether to renege on their reneging.

It is one of the trickiest dilemmas facing Republicans this election cycle: whether to give up on a race that could help decide which party controls the United States Senate or stand by Mr. Akin and risk hurting Republican candidates in other states.

''Are they willing to let a guy who should win a seat lose a seat because they sat on their hands?'' asked Michael Centanni, the chairman of Freedom's Defense Fund, which announced late last month that it would spend a quarter of a million dollars in support of Mr. Akin. ''They're going to be in a much worse situation if he ends up losing by a point and they sat on the sidelines.''

Newt Gingrich, who attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Akin on Sept. 24 near St. Louis, said Republicans who rushed to judgment needed to consider the error of their decision.

''Akin's not the only one who made a mistake,'' Mr. Gingrich said in an interview. ''Just as he had to eat a little bit of crow, there are some other folks'' who will, too.

Some of the deep-pocketed donors, most notably the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who withdrew their financing and support of Mr. Akin will inevitably return, Mr. Gingrich said.

''I don't see how they'll avoid getting in the race,'' he added.

But Republicans should focus on more than the Senate math, said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri who quickly distanced himself from Mr. Akin after the comments in August.

''Akin has come to symbolize a version of the Republican Party that's just not acceptable to an awful lot of people,'' Mr. Danforth said in an interview. ''I don't know if he can win or not in the election in the Senate race, but I think this is bigger than one Senate seat. I think it's the brand of the Republican Party, and I think he taints the Republican Party.''

While Mr. Danforth is maintaining his opposition to Mr. Akin, other Republicans are returning to his corner. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and two former senators from the state, Christopher S. Bond and Jim Talent, recently endorsed Mr. Akin after initially urging him to step aside after his comments about rape and abortion.

''They're going to have to explain to voters whether they support his position on these issues or whether they're just acting in political expediency,'' said Caitlin Legacki, a spokeswoman for Ms. McCaskill.

Mr. Blunt declined a request for an interview. But in a statement released shortly after the Sept. 25 deadline for dropping out of the race, he gave Mr. Akin an endorsement that sounded more obligatory than excited.

''Congressman Akin and I don't agree on everything, but he and I agree the Senate majority must change,'' Mr. Blunt said. ''From Governor Romney to the county courthouse, I'll be working for the Republican ticket in Missouri, and that includes Todd Akin.''

Other Senate Republicans have also backed Mr. Akin in recent days, including Tom Coburn and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The four conservative senators hosted a fund-raising luncheon for Mr. Akin on Wednesday, with tickets ranging from $250 to $2,500. Rick Santorum, a former senator and presidential candidate from Pennsylvania, also announced his support of Mr. Akin.

An adviser to Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said in a television interview that Mr. Romney had not gotten behind Mr. Akin. And Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, also a Republican, said on television last Sunday that the Republican Party should not support Mr. Akin.

More important is the absence of million-dollar donor groups in Mr. Akin's corner.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee had intended to spend $3 million on the race, and American Crossroads, a ''super PAC'' founded by Karl Rove, had planned to spend $2.3 million before pulling their support. Both groups have been coy about their intentions, saying they did not plan to re-enter the race but not ruling out the possibility.

Conservative donor groups appeared on edge and cautious about their deliberations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent nearly $350,000 opposing Ms. McCaskill before Mr. Akin won the nomination, has not spent anything in Missouri since. Rob Engstrom, the chamber's political director, responded to inquiries about the Missouri contest with a terse e-mail saying only that the group had ''no plans to engage'' in the general election race.

Mr. Akin has received considerable pledges from some groups. The Senate Conservatives Fund has started a drive to raise $300,000 for him, and as of Friday evening it had collected more than $270,000. Freedom's Defense Fund has spent more than $66,000 on the race so far. Last weekend, CitizenLink, an evangelical group affiliated with Focus on the Family, spent $52,413.67 on the race.

But Mr. Akin is being vastly outspent by Ms. McCaskill, who reported raising $5.8 million since July 1, and her allies. From Sept. 25 through last Monday, Ms. McCaskill's campaign spent nearly seven and a half times as much ($364,810) and ran more than 11 times as many ads as Mr. Akin's, according to data compiled by Kantar Media/CMAG, a firm that monitors political advertising. Outside groups backing Ms. McCaskill have spent more than $2 million, nearly four times as much as those supporting Mr. Akin.

While he welcomes the return of deep-pocketed donors and believes that some will inevitably say, ''Hey, I was too quick to judge Congressman Akin,'' Perry Akin, Mr. Akin's son and campaign manager, said he believed that the campaign was on the right track.

''There's a lot of contrast between our messages,'' he said of the two campaigns. ''We have adequate funding to be able to present that to the voters so they can make a decision on it.''

But Todd Akin has had to deal with continued distractions that could scare away donors. His campaign had to go on the defensive after a video surfaced of a 2008 address on the House floor in which he equated abortion providers to terrorists and said they commonly performed abortion procedures on women who were not pregnant. Also, he had to amend 10 years of financial disclosure reports last week for failing to report nearly $130,000 in pension income.

The campaigns have been sharply attacking each other in ads -- with Mr. Akin painting Ms. McCaskill as a staunch Obama ally who supported the health care law and stimulus bill, and Ms. McCaskill painting her rival as an extremist whose views are out of line with those of Missouri's voters.

In his most recent commercial, Mr. Akin accuses Ms. McCaskill of benefiting from stimulus payments made to housing development companies associated with her husband. A recent McCaskill campaign ad questions comments Mr. Akin made about Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage and student loans before bringing up the rape comment and asking, ''What will he say next?''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/some-in-gop-see-little-choice-but-to-back-todd-akin.html


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Todd Akin lost the support of Republicans including Mitt Romney. (A18)
Todd Akin, left, campaigning last month in Harrisonville, Mo., has regained the support of some fellow Republicans who had pulled away from him. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVE HEBERT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A23)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



594 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Never Waver, Never Wobble


BYLINE: By FRANK BRUNI


SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 3


LENGTH: 1076 words


WHAT fools most of us are. What chumps. We worry about our flaws, sweat our mistakes, allow the truth to be our tether and let conscience trip us up. We tiptoe. We equivocate.

The political arena would make mincemeat of us.

It's a place for pure bravado, a lesson we've been reminded of lately by politicians as diverse and diversely accomplished as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton and of course Mitt Romney, who gave President Obama a special tutorial on Wednesday night.

How did he win their first debate? Let us count the ways: by homing in tight on the president's unmet goals and unfinished business. By looking consistently into the camera during his closing remarks, which Obama somehow forgot to do. By being alert, while the president seemed hungry for, or hung over from, a nap.

By smuggling notes in? Certain hysterics on the left lofted this accusation, pointing to wholly ambiguous video snippets, while their counterparts on the right claimed that the unemployment rate's dip to 7.8 percent -- the lowest since the first month of Obama's presidency -- was some sort of statistical skulduggery by the White House. The homestretch of this bitter campaign will clearly be fertile for more than nasty commercials. A thousand conspiracy theories will bloom.

None will adequately explain Obama's torpor when, at the debate, Romney actually made a reference to his own accountant, a ball that came in low and slow over the plate, practically begging Obama to knock it out of the park. Which he did. The following day. After the credits had already rolled and 67 million viewers had gone back to their usual programming.

Al Gore wondered whether Denver's mile-high elevation and a deficit of oxygen had undone The One. There should be a Hall of Fame for political spin, and this bit of conjecture should be enshrined in it immediately.

Obama's problem wasn't altitude. It was attitude -- and affect. In a format that demands certitude, he hemmed. In a vocation that rewards swagger, he wobbled.

Had he failed to take a good look around him? Not noticed that some of the grandmasters of bravado were out and about, striding across the land and showing how it's done?

Schwarzenegger spent last week on the interview circuit, plugging a memoir, ''Total Recall,'' that's a testament not only to outsize confidence -- he insisted on supremacy in bodybuilding, movies and politics, three careers not previously associated with one another -- but also to the peculiar talent that many successful people have for being utterly unabashed.

You'd think that he wouldn't want to humiliate his estranged wife, Maria Shriver, any more than he already did with the revelation last year that he had fathered the son of a housekeeper in their employ. You'd be wrong. In a book that needn't have been written -- he has all the money he could want, as he bragged to Lesley Stahl in a ''60 Minutes'' segment that was broadcast last Sunday -- he confirmed an affair with Brigitte Nielsen, his co-star in ''Red Sonja,'' that happened some eight years into his relationship with Shriver.

In the Stahl interview, he tersely admitted wrongdoing, but was more expansive about his new $250,000 Mercedes, a monstrous truck that he eagerly showed her. Look how mighty! How tall! In Arnold's world, redemption is a matter of riding high and not letting anyone or anything bring you down. Bravado is the new contrition.

HARRY REID understands this. After his charge several months ago that Romney had gone a decade without paying federal income tax, he was widely (and justly) roasted. His response? To level that charge again and again. Don't retreat, repeat. That's the strategy of the day.

It's Paul Ryan's method. His selection as Romney's running mate prompted a closer look at his Congressional record, which revealed that he had voted for increased federal spending, contributing to a larger federal debt, during George W. Bush's presidency. Did he then feel compelled to modulate his marketing of himself as the great deficit hawk and budget truth-teller of our time?

Please. He proceeded to give a convention speech that chastised Obama for his neglect of the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan, even though Ryan himself had refused to support it.

Speaking of the conventions, the Clinton nostalgia that reached its apotheosis at the Democrats' gathering in Charlotte has been an interesting exercise in something less than total recall. His presidency was indeed a successful one, and he's a brilliant model for how to shape public opinion and for the glad-handing, backslapping and messy compromise that the legislative progress typically requires.

But how much more successful might that presidency have been if his private failings hadn't opened the door to public scandal? If he hadn't strayed? There's almost no talk about missed opportunities, and that's a tribute to his unbowed posture. He may have been impeachable, but his self-assurance wasn't and isn't. And what wounds time doesn't heal, a broad smile and a defiant twinkle take care of.

Romney actually allowed himself a public expression of regret late last week, apologizing for his infamous ''47 percent'' remark. But this came only when the campaign narrative had suddenly turned in his favor, and certainly not in the hot glare of Wednesday night. For the debate viewers he was all pluck and no doubt, even when he fibbed or flipped.

Obama didn't exactly crumble, contrary to the consensus that deepened and darkened as the minutes ticked by and we pundits piled up, each judgment less qualified and each voice more emphatic than the last. An unimpressive performance became an unalloyed cataclysm, never mind that Ronald Reagan bungled his first debate with Walter Mondale and was nonetheless re-elected in a landslide, or that George W. Bush muffed his initial face-off with John Kerry and also won a second term.

There's still a month to go. The fundamental dynamics of the electorate aren't different now than they were when Romney and Obama strode to their lecterns. And Obama, in the past, has shown himself plenty capable of extreme nerve, extraordinary verve and epic self-promotion. He just lost touch with his bravado in Denver.

As Dan Rather told Rachel Maddow on Thursday, ''We learned again last night, if we needed any reminding, that there's power in taking the view, 'Listen, I'm frequently in error, but never in doubt.' ''

That perspective may not be admirable. But it's effective. And it's politics.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/bruni-debate-advice-never-waver-never-wobble.html


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY BEN WISEMAN)


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



595 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Two Presidents, Smoking and Scheming


BYLINE: By MAUREEN DOWD


SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1207 words


AFTER the debate, I was talking to Aaron Sorkin, who was a little down. Or, as he put it, ''nonverbal, shouting incoherently at a squirrel, angrier than when the Jets lost to the 49ers last Sunday without ever really being on the field.''

Aaron was mollified when he learned that President Obama, realizing things were dire, privately sought the counsel of a former Democratic president known for throwing down in debates. I asked Aaron if he knew how the conversation between the two presidents had gone and, as it happened, he did. This is his account.

The lights from the presidential motorcade illuminate a New Hampshire farmhouse at night in the sprawling New England landscape. JED BARTLET steps out onto his porch as the motorcade slows to a stop.

BARTLET (calling out) Don't even get out of the car!

BARACK OBAMA (opening the door of his limo) Five minutes, that's all I want.

BARTLET Were you sleepy?

OBAMA Jed --

BARTLET Was that the problem? Had you just taken allergy medication? General anesthesia?

OBAMA I had an off night.

BARTLET What makes you say that? The fact that the Cheesecake Factory is preparing an ad campaign boasting that it served Romney his pre-debate meal? Law school graduates all over America are preparing to take the bar exam by going to the freakin' Cheesecake Factory!

OBAMA (following Bartlet inside) I can understand why you're upset, Jed.

BARTLET Did your staff let you know the debate was gonna be on television?

OBAMA (looking in the other room) Is that Jeff Daniels?

BARTLET That's Will McAvoy, he just looks like Jeff Daniels.

OBAMA Why's he got Jim Lehrer in a hammerlock?

BARTLET That's called an Apache Persuasion Hold. McAvoy thinks it's the responsibility of the moderator to expose -- what are they called? -- lies.

WILL (shouting) Did Obama remove the work requirement from Welfare-to-Work?!

LEHRER No!

WILL And you didn't want to ask Romney about that because? It would've been impolite?!

BARTLET Let's go in another room, Mr. President. You want a cigarette?

OBAMA I stopped smoking.

BARTLET Start again. (Leading the way into his study) I'm a father of daughters, you're a father of daughters. It looked to me like right before you went on stage, Sasha told you she likes a boy in her class who has a tattoo.

OBAMA That's not what hap --

BARTLET Here's what you do. You invite the boy over for dinner, you have a couple of fellas from your detail brush their suit coats back just enough so the lad can see the .44 Magnums -- problem solved. You have what every father of a daughter dreams of -- an army and a good dog.

OBAMA The girls are fine, that wasn't the problem. In the debate prep we --

BARTLET Whoa ... there was prep?

OBAMA (shouting) Enough! (taking a cigarette and lighting it) I appreciate that the view's pretty good from the cheap seats. Gore chalked up my debate performance to the altitude. He debated at sea level -- what was his excuse?

BARTLET They told you to make sure you didn't seem condescending, right? They told you, ''First, do no harm,'' and in your case that means don't appear condescending, and you bought it. 'Cause for the American right, condescension is the worst crime you can commit.

OBAMA What's your suggestion?

BARTLET Appear condescending. Now it comes naturally to me --

OBAMA I know.

BARTLET It's a gift, but I'm likable and you're likable enough. Thirty straight months of job growth -- blown off. G.M. showing record profits -- unmentioned. ''Governor, would you still let Detroit go bankrupt as you urged us to do four years ago?'' -- unasked. (shouting) I'm talkin' to you, too, Lehrer!

WILL (in the other room) I got him, sir!

BARTLET All right! (back to OBAMA) And that was quite a display of hard-nosed, fiscal conservatism when he slashed one one-hundredth of 1 percent from the federal budget by canceling ''Sesame Street'' and ''Downton Abbey.'' I think we're halfway home. Mr. President, your prep for the next debate need not consist of anything more than learning to pronounce three words: ''Governor, you're lying.'' Let's replay some of Wednesday night's more jaw-dropping visits to the Land Where Facts Go to Die. ''I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don't have a tax cut of a scale you're talking about.''

OBAMA The Tax Policy Center analysis of your proposal for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut in all federal income tax rates, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, the estate tax and other reductions, says it would be a $5 trillion tax cut.

BARTLET In other words ...

OBAMA You're lying, Governor.

BARTLET ''I saw a study that came out today that said you're going to raise taxes by $3,000 to $4,000 on middle-income families.''

OBAMA The American Enterprise Institute found my budget actually would reduce the share of taxes that each taxpayer pays to service the debt by $1,289.89 for taxpayers earning in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

BARTLET Which is another way of saying ...

OBAMA You're lying, Governor.

BARTLET ''I want to take that $716 billion you've cut and put it back into Medicare.''

OBAMA The $716 billion I've cut is from the providers, not the beneficiaries. I think that's a better idea than cutting the exact same $716 billion and replacing it with a gift certificate, which is what's contained in the plan that's named for your running mate.

BARTLET ''Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.''

OBAMA Not unless you've come up with a new plan since this afternoon.

BARTLET ''You doubled the deficit.''

OBAMA When I took office in 2009, the deficit was 1.4 trillion. According to the C.B.O., the deficit for 2012 will be 1.1 trillion. Either you have the mathematics aptitude of a Shetland pony or, much more likely, you're lying.

BARTLET ''All of the increase in natural gas has happened on private land, not on government land. On government land, your administration has cut the number of permits and licenses in half.''

OBAMA Maybe your difficulty is with the words ''half'' and ''double.'' Oil production on federal land is higher, not lower. And the oil and gas industry are currently sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill on government land that they've not yet begun developing.

BARTLET ''I think about half the green firms you've invested in have gone out of business.''

OBAMA Yeah, your problem's definitely with the word ''half.'' As of this moment there have been 26 recipients of loan guarantees -- 23 of which are very much in business. What was Bain's bankruptcy record again?

BARTLET And finally?

OBAMA Governor, if your ideas are the right ideas for our country, if you have a plan and it's the best plan for our future, if your vision is the best vision for all of us and not 53 percent of us, why aren't you able to make that case in the same ZIP code as the truth?

BARTLET And?

OBAMA Tell John Sununu anytime he wants to teach me how to be more American he knows my address for the next four years. He used to have an office there before he was fired.

BARTLET You picked a bad night to have a bad night, that's all. You've got two more chances to change the scoreboard, and Joe unplugged should be pretty good television too. Make Romney your cabana boy in New York.

OBAMA Got it.

BARTLET (taking the cigarette out of OBAMA's hand and stubbing it out) These things'll kill you. Pull McAvoy off Lehrer on your way out.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/dowd-two-presidents-smoking-and-scheming.html


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY ISTVAN BANYAI) (SR13)


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



596 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


A Man of Many Minds


BYLINE: By ROBERT DRAPER


SECTION: Section MM; Column 0; Magazine Desk; Pg. 26


LENGTH: 5826 words


It was almost exactly four years ago that Mitt Romney watched up close as John McCain agonized over how he should respond to America's spiraling financial crisis. What McCain ultimately chose to do, six weeks before the election, was to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to meet with President Bush and Congressional leaders. But that strategic gamble -- which now takes its place in the annals of political misfires -- came as a result of a somber meeting earlier that day with his economic team at a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The attendees included several of the candidate's big donors in the finance industry, a few political advisers and Romney.

''It was an unrelentingly bleak discussion, with the financial guys talking about the world as we know it ending,'' recalls Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was McCain's senior economic adviser at the time. Another McCain senior staff member, who, like many people I spoke with, would speak only under the condition of anonymity, told me: ''At the time, there wasn't a person on the political team who understood what a credit-default swap was or toxic mortgages or subprime bundling. At one point I asked, 'What do you mean by economic collapse?' And one of them answered, 'It means you won't be able to get a 20-dollar bill out of an A.T.M.' Right after the meeting I called my wife and said, 'Get $30,000 in cash out of the bank today.' It was terrifying and surreal.''

Romney had been an informal adviser, fund-raiser and campaign surrogate for McCain since dropping out of the G.O.P. race seven months earlier. Well before the meltdown of the markets that summer, the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital C.E.O. had emphasized his vast experience in the private sector. As he told one campaign audience in Sarasota, Fla., in January 2008: ''I will not need briefings on how the economy works. I know how it works. I've been there.''

That day in the Hilton conference room, however, Romney did not distinguish himself as McCain struggled to decide what course he should recommend in Washington. Holtz-Eakin recalls ''nothing specifically'' that Romney had to offer. The other McCain senior staff member is more emphatic: ''The reality is he didn't take command. He wasn't a Marshall-type figure who conveyed an understanding of both business and politics. But the truth is, no one else had any clue what to do, either.'' Then he added, ''There wasn't a single person in the room, including Romney, who had any specific policy recommendation.''

Four years later, Mitt Romney's unsteady campaign performance has yet to convince voters that he is a ''Marshall-type figure'' who can, in his own distinct way, fill the office of the presidency. Only recently has Romney begun to detail the policies he would pursue if elected, as if they were hatched from a few late-night strategy sessions after a string of bad news days rather than from the candidate's core philosophy. The fact that Romney is in charge of his own widely criticized campaign doesn't appear to be especially reassuring to the electorate -- and even so, his campaign tactics reveal only what he would do in order to win, not what he'll do once he has won.

Romney faces an incumbent with his own leadership issues, though Obama has the benefit of surrogates who are deft at ascribing fittingly presidential characteristics to him. One morning in June, I sat in the Chicago mayor's office of Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, watching as he emptied a grab bag of leadership adjectives: ''competitive,'' ''disciplined,'' ''resolute.'' Emanuel then bolted out of his chair, saying, ''This'll give you a sense of his mind.'' He led me into a hallway where the walls were festooned with images from the Oval Office. Pointing, the mayor said: ''This is literally his first day as president, 9:30 in the morning. There's nothing on his desk, obviously -- first day. This,'' he then gestured to another framed photograph, ''is me coming back after I'm mayor-elect, sometime in early 2011. You see anything on that desk?''

I didn't. Obama's desk still looked nearly vacant. Emanuel whirled to the other wall and directed my attention to a much earlier photo, featuring himself and another familiar face, seated behind the same desk, which in this shot was ornamented by a riot of Victorian clutter. ''Clinton,'' he grinned. ''Look at the desk. Now mind you, he's got everything arranged. Books are stacked, folders are over here, the coins soldiers gave him here, the pens -- he loved pens -- here. Incredibly creative mind.'' And then pointing back to Obama's spartan desk: ''Incredibly disciplined mind. Both incredible presidents. But their desks, in my view, say something.''

What Mitt Romney's old desks tell us about his ineffable powers of leadership is hard to divine, but through private conversations with Romney's senior strategists over the years, it's clear that they are as genuinely admiring of their candidate's biography as they are inept at selling it to the outside world. Bob White, who worked with Romney at Bain Capital, led his 1994 Senate campaign and later assisted him at the Winter Olympics and in every campaign since, said to me: ''The totality of Mitt's experiences -- starting up a business, taking all that he learned from Bain and applying it to the Olympics where the situation was dire and then moving on to another broken situation in Massachusetts and fixing that as well -- uniquely qualifies him for the challenges of the presidency. Time and time again, Mitt has stepped forward.''

You almost never hear Romney staff members cast their candidate in such a manner. Maybe it's because White's distillation calls to mind a lifelong technocrat who does whatever works rather than a conservative leader who sticks to ''what's right.'' But it's especially rare to hear the candidate or his operation refer to the period of his life when he actually did wrestle daily with both what works and what's right on behalf of his constituents -- the four years by which we can best judge what kind of president Mitt Romney might be. Drawing conclusions from his single term as Massachusetts's chief executive is, obviously, a feat of extrapolation, because the issues that he faced as well as the powers that he wielded hardly measure up to those of the Oval Office. Still, those four years are telling, even more than the campaign's decision not to talk about them.

To the newly elected governor of Massachusetts in January 2003, the commonwealth was a deeply flawed business model requiring sweeping remedies. He went about enacting them in the dispassionate manner of a C.E.O. Romney coaxed three non-Republicans out of the private sector and into cabinet-level positions. In addressing the state's $3 billion deficit, ''Mitt was opposed to an across-the-board cut, so we had to go through the state budget line by line, and that took an incredible amount of time and focus,'' recalls his senior adviser and former chief of staff, Beth Myers. Another former Romney administration official told me that the governor's methodology for analyzing the budget -- ''What's your product line, what are you trying to achieve, whether you're cost-effective in certain areas and whether you're setting your prices right''-- was deliberately Bain-like. Having informed Grover Norquist that he would not be signing a no-taxes pledge, the governor made creative use of various revenue streams -- including raising registry deed fees that had stayed the same for decades and closing corporate tax loopholes that existed only to benefit a handful of firms.

Romney's budget was clever but uncontroversial; the need to address the deficit was universally acknowledged, and Democrats had no appetite for increasing income taxes after having already done so the previous year. As the Massachusetts House minority leader Brad Jones told me, ''The Democratic Legislature quite frankly didn't have to do anything he wanted and could have done whatever it wanted and overridden his vetoes with ease and impunity.'' Closing the deficit, in any event, was the easy part. In Romney's appraisal of the state's financial paradigm, much bolder moves than simple short-term reductions and increases were required. The C.E.O. relished such scenarios: his writings, his marathon policy meetings and his heritage as the son of George Romney, the American Motors Corporation chairman, revealed a fondness for unorthodox ideas.

And so the chief executive sought a complete reorganization of the state's executive branch. He commissioned Bain to map out a dramatic restructuring of the 29 state-university campuses. He proposed a major reduction in the number of lawyer and press-secretary positions in state government, closing or merging several courts and doing away with the state's Turnpike Authority. In a move that would be reprised years later in Wisconsin and Ohio, his administration took dead aim at public-employee pensions. ''First thing we did,'' a senior official recalls, ''was sit down with all the unions, including the state police, and say: 'We have new rules: you guys aren't getting any more money than the revenue growth we're achieving at the state level. Now go home and think about that.' Next thing we said was, 'All these chummy negotiations are over -- here's a list of what we want.' And they looked at the list like we were from Mars.''

But for the most part, the only unconventional ideas that Romney managed to enact were those that he could ratify unilaterally. ''He made significant consolidations in those agencies he directly oversaw, like housing, environment and transportation,'' says Kerry Healey, his former lieutenant governor. ''But higher education is buffeted with various boards and commissions, so we were reduced to working around the edges to achieve our goals. And something like making changes in the pension system, there would have needed to have been a lot of consensus built around it.'' Romney's failure to muster such a consensus had little to do with his party affiliation: other Republican governors in Massachusetts, like Frank Sargent and William Weld, long profited from excellent relations with their Democratic counterparts in the State Legislature. But what Sargent and Weld had that the Bain C.E.O. lacked was experience in forming political alliances and reaching compromises. ''For better or for worse, he hadn't been a creature of the Legislature, and neither was his lieutenant governor,'' says Brad Jones, the minority leader. ''Maybe that's a good thing on the campaign trail, but it makes governing a challenge when you don't have the relationships.''

Several of Romney's initiatives, like higher-education reform -- which would have entailed tuition hikes and severe budget cuts for some schools -- were deeply unpopular. Building grass-roots support was not part of Romney's world experience, and he made almost no effort to enlist the public in his crusade. ''Obviously change is difficult, and for a governor or president, bringing about change is a very different art form from the private sector,'' Michael Widmer, president of the conservative-leaning watchdog group Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, told me. ''Romney put forward some very positive reforms. But as it turned out, he never really followed up on them in any meaningful way.'' Instead of working with the Democrats on Beacon Hill, Romney decided to recruit a host of Republican challengers to unseat them in 2004. The tactic backfired. ''He ended up losing three seats and a lot of good will in the bargain,'' Widmer said.

Later in his term, the governor would show more adroitness at rallying the public to pressure lawmakers. In 2005 Romney introduced a bill that would become known as Melanie's Law -- named for Melanie Powell, a 13-year-old girl who was killed by a repeat-offense drunken driver -- that imposed strict sentences on those who were convicted of drunken driving multiple times. When a few state representatives who were trial lawyers tried to dilute the bill, he responded with a barnstorming tour that shamed Democrats into restoring nearly all the original language, which Romney then signed into law in October. The next month, Romney successfully fought back against legislators seeking to pass a retroactive capital-gains tax, by inviting about a dozen nonwealthy citizens to a news conference to describe how the new tax bill would upend their lives. ''Melanie's Law and the capital-gains tax are perfect examples of how a governor can succeed,'' the former Democratic House speaker Tom Finneran says. ''I'll give the governor credit for growth. I think he learned as he went along that being governor wasn't like a Bain takeover of a troubled company.''

In a sense, however, that's exactly what being governor was like for Romney. He came in, reimagined the business model, improved the numbers, profited handsomely from the experience and subsequently moved on.

In 2007, I asked Romney when he began to think about running for president. ''It was probably, oh, back when I was with Senator [Bob] Bennett of Utah after the Olympics, when I was governor a couple of years, sometime in 2004,'' he replied. ''He just said to me: 'You know, you don't have to decide if you want to be president. But you do have to decide if you want the option to become president.' '' (Bennett confirmed that he conveyed this in a memo just after George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.)

And so during the final two years of his term, Governor Romney's balance sheet included a new and weighty set of considerations. When the needs of his state coincided with the needs of his national political profile, Romney showed a willingness to accommodate his political adversaries that had not been apparent during the first two years of his governorship. This was particularly evident during the effort to pass a universal health care initiative in Massachusetts in 2005-6. ''It's largely true that in his last two years he focused on two things: the beginning of his run for the presidency and health reform, which was to be his signature achievement and one for which he deserves a significant amount of the credit,'' Widmer told me. With noticeable amusement, David Bowen, a senior staff member for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who played a key role in the effort, added, ''Everyone thought at the time that Romney's success in forging a bipartisan compromise on health care was actually a thing that he would ultimately run on, not run away from.''

To get the legislation passed, Romney partnered with Kennedy, his former political opponent in the 1994 Senate race. Together they met with Bush's Health and Human Services secretary, Tommy Thompson, during his last day in office in January 2005 and persuaded him to renew a $385 million Medicaid-funding waiver that was crucial to financing the legislation -- and then accompanied Thompson to a going-away party in the building, where Romney and Kennedy performed an ''Odd Couple'' skit that brought down the house. ''I must say, I was favorably impressed with Romney in the meeting,'' another Kennedy staff member recalls. ''I'd seen him in the [1994] Senate debates, and he seemed plastic and about an inch deep -- where in this small meeting he was witty and engaging and working to make it happen.''

Romney became the most vocal proponent of the so-called individual mandate (requiring nearly all residents to purchase insurance on a sliding scale of affordability), which Kennedy and progressive groups initially resisted but later warmed to, without heavy-handed pressure on the governor's part. When a legislative deadlock between the state's two top Democrats, Senate President Robert Travaglini and House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, in February and March of 2006 threatened to sunder progress, Romney staged unannounced (yet well-publicized) visits to their homes but otherwise left it to Kennedy's more experienced hands to produce a détente between the two leaders.

Once a deal was imminent, the Romney administration staged a photogenic bill-signing ceremony in Faneuil Hall with Senator Kennedy, who flew in from Washington, at the governor's behest. Recalls a longtime associate of Speaker DiMasi, ''There was a sense we had that the event would wind up in a Romney-for-president campaign commercial.''

But the political spreadsheet that directed Mitt Romney to favor one landmark initiative could also dissuade him from favoring another. Among the more remarkable features of Romney's early governorship was his determination to be not only a pro-environment executive but also a leader in the field. To oversee a broad portfolio of issues affecting the environment, Romney appointed Doug Foy, a lifelong environmentalist who had often sued the state in his capacity as C.E.O. of the Conservation Law Foundation. On May 6, 2004, Romney and Foy held a news conference to announce the release of a detailed climate-change action plan. In the plan's cover letter, the governor argued forcefully that meeting the challenges of global warming made good business sense. Rather than demand definitive proof of the human contribution to climate change, the state should pursue a ''no regrets'' policy -- one in which, Romney wrote, ''we can also lead the nation in new energy technologies.'' According to one of a half-dozen environmental officials with whom I spoke (and all of whom insisted on anonymity so they could speak candidly about their experiences), the governor sat through more than 20 hours of briefings on the climate-change plan: ''We went through about 80 measures. He left almost everything in, and the things he took out weren't because they were ideologically off-base but because they weren't well thought out.''

A sentimental subtext underlay his conservationist outlook: his father's company had produced one of the world's first fuel-efficient cars. And when discussing the global dimensions of climate change, the governor displayed a level of humaneness that fellow congregants in his Mormon church often saw but that his current presidential campaign has been at pains to highlight. Two environmental officials recall him saying: ''I think the impacts of this are going to be large. We in the Western world may have the money to work our way out of the problem. But what are poor people in Bangladesh going to do?''

At the same time, bucking conservative orthodoxy carried obvious risks, as Romney knew better than anyone. After all, George Romney's proclamation in 1967 that he had been given a ''brainwashing'' by the military on the progress of the Vietnam War effectively ended his quest for the presidency. ''Being right early is not good in politics,'' Romney would quote his chastened father as saying -- and in turn signaling that the son would not repeat the mistake.

''Have you seen the movie 'Animal House'?'' one of Governor Romney's environmental officials asked me. ''You remember that character who has the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, both telling him what to do? Watching Romney, my sense was that he was always inclined to do the right thing on environmental issues. But then there was the devil on the other side. You could almost see it. It was palpable. Clearly, in retrospect, he was weighing what was right for Massachusetts with how it would play nationally.''

Fully a year before unveiling his climate-change plan, Romney agreed to participate in the creation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (pronounced ''reggie''), a consortium of nine Northeastern states invited by Gov. George E. Pataki of New York to formulate the nation's first comprehensive cap-and-trade, greenhouse-gas-reduction policy. In a July 21, 2003, letter to Pataki, Romney wrote that ''now is the time to take action toward climate protection.'' He noted that his administration ''has a target of reducing greenhouse gases'' and added that ''I believe that our joint work to create a flexible market-based regional cap-and-trade system could serve as an effective approach to meeting those goals.'' The concept appealed to Romney's penchant for cutting-edge solutions. One of Romney's top officials told me that if the states had been able to finalize an agreement during the first year and a half of Romney's term, ''there's no question he would have signed. No doubt about it.''

But Romney's desire to be bold on climate change wasn't shared by fellow Republicans. Already the Bush administration had backed out of the Kyoto Treaty. In late 2004 and early 2005, the governor began to give speeches to Republican audiences in the conservative early-primary states Iowa and South Carolina. Following these travels, Romney's chief of staff, Beth Myers, who assisted in Romney's bid for governor in 2002, made her presence felt in the RGGI negotiations. As the guardian of Romney's political ambitions, she remained in frequent contact throughout 2004 and 2005 with operatives who formed a Romney political-action committee to raise money for a presidential campaign, according to someone involved in the communications. Later, Myers would become the manager of that campaign. Myers ''hated climate-change from Day 1,'' says one top environmental official who frequently discussed the issue with her. ''It didn't fit her political equation.'' She contacted the other RGGI states and conveyed to them that the governor now had concerns. Romney was insisting on a hard cap. Though there was an economic logic to the idea, introducing a hard cap would have by definition placed a regulation on an otherwise free market. The demand ''came out of nowhere,'' recalls one of Pataki's senior officials. ''There'd been no talk about an allowance cap for the first two years since the conversation started. It looked like a bait and switch. We watched Beth install her own cronies in the negotiations. It wasn't lost on us that Doug Foy was dealing with some major internal strife.''

Foy could see that his boss was struggling to reconcile his predisposition toward RGGI with other considerations. Foy succeeded in persuading the other RGGI states to agree to a nonrigid cap that would come into play if prices went too high. But while his Office of Commonwealth Development was extracting cost offsets in an effort to make RGGI more palatable for Romney, the governor's Office of Economic Development began to work with the defense contractor Raytheon and other businesses to oppose it. Both sides met in Romney's office in December 2005. Though the setting was a Bain-like unemotional inquisition, the ex-C.E.O. seemed only selectively interested in the data. ''He kept saying, in effect, 'Yeah, but you can't guarantee the prices won't go higher,' '' recalls one of the people with knowledge of the meeting. And Renee Fry, who represented the businesses seeking to jettison RGGI, says, ''As we were leaving, he said, 'I've got to think about how this is going to affect jobs.' '' Romney's desire to lead the nation on climate change had vanished from the discussion.

On Dec. 14, 2005, Romney publicly announced two things: that Massachusetts was withdrawing from RGGI and that he would not be seeking a second term as governor. Romney's successor, Deval Patrick, reversed Romney's decision shortly after taking office in January 2007, and Massachusetts has been a RGGI member ever since. Romney's economic concerns turned out to be unwarranted. ''I think the Massachusetts business climate is very strong -- it would be hard to find any damage that was done by RGGI,'' says David Tuerck of the conservative Beacon Hill Institute, which opposed RGGI. In fact, according to a 50-page independent analysis done by four energy experts, RGGI has led to more rather than fewer jobs and an overall net economic benefit.

When I contacted him, Doug Foy chose to put a positive spin on Romney's climate-change odyssey. ''I told him that we were eventually going to land RGGI -- he knew that for a long time -- but he never said, 'You should stop,' '' he told me. ''Even though he never signed it, he allowed it to go on.''

Like RGGI, embryonic-stem-cell research was the kind of breakthrough concept to which Romney was instinctively drawn. The governor learned in the fall of 2004 that the Massachusetts Legislature would be considering a bill the following spring that would permit the cloning of embryos in lab research seeking a cure for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. As one Romney senior strategist told me, ''I think the governor was predisposed to be in favor of stem cells.'' But all that changed, Romney would later claim, on the day in November 2004 that he met with two Harvard researchers and thereafter decided not only to oppose embryonic cloning but also to reverse his long-stated support for a woman's right to have an abortion.

The meeting took place at the governor's request. Romney along with Beth Myers and Peter Flaherty, a senior adviser who would later serve as the presidential candidate's liaison to social conservatives, met with Dr. Douglas Melton, co-director of Harvard's Stem Cell Institute, and another Harvard representative. An internationally recognized pioneer in the field who briefed President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on the subject, Melton has said that having a diabetic child animated his desire to seek a cure through stem-cell research. For nearly a half-hour, Melton explained to Romney and his staff how an embryonic stem cell is derived from a recently fertilized inner cell mass. Melton's institute obtained such material, he told them, from in-vitro-fertilization clinics, where some 400,000 surplus ova sit in freezers, typically to remain indefinitely or to be discarded.

Acquiring these frozen embryos was anything but a casual process, both Harvard guests went on to explain. Each donor would undergo two rounds of informed consent over a period of a month, while Harvard itself insisted upon two separate rounds of ethical review -- a painstaking process that at times frustrated the scientific community. Only a few of the 400,000 surplus embryos ended up being donated to the institute, where they were treated with particular care, like nothing else in the Harvard laboratories.

Romney asked questions throughout the presentation. When Melton began to describe the process of somatic-cell nuclear transfer -- in which a cell from a patient with, say, Parkinson's disease, is transferred into a denucleated egg so as to clone a new ''defective'' embryonic-stem-cell line that can be studied -- the governor interjected, ''Well that, then, is human life.''

What happened after that is disputed. A year and a half later, in June 2006, Romney would tell the journalist Judy Woodruff that the Harvard team displayed a flip attitude at the meeting that completely altered his thinking. ''I sat down with a researcher, and he said, 'Look, you don't have to think about this stem-cell research as a moral issue, because we kill the embryos after 14 days,' '' Romney recounted, explaining to Woodruff why he decided to change his position on abortion. ''And that struck me as he said that. And I thought, Is that the extent to which we've cheapened life . . . that we think about killing embryos without batting an eye? And I recognized that I could no longer stand in the posture of saying, Look, I'm personally opposed, but I'm not gonna change the law. I needed to make it very clear that in my view, we are wrong to accept abortion, other than in cases of rape and incest.''

Romney repeated this story almost verbatim in a National Review profile published in December 2006, adding, ''After the meeting I looked over at Beth Myers, my chief of staff, and we both had exactly the same reaction -- it just hit us hard just how much the sanctity of life had been cheapened by virtue of the Roe v. Wade mentality.'' Peter Flaherty recalls that the governor ''suddenly seemed affected by it at the time -- in body language, and saying something like, 'This is clearly a serious issue.' ''

But the Harvard participants do not recollect Romney showing any concern. On the contrary, they remember Romney saying that he was proud to be governor of a state where such important work was going on. Their first inkling that Romney felt so strongly about what he remembers being said came more than a year later, when he began publicly explaining his new stance on abortion.

Furthermore, Melton vehemently denies that he used the language Romney quoted. ''I did not use the word 'kill,' '' he told me recently. ''I've never used the word 'kill' in relation to this in any conversation with anyone, from elementary-school students to scientists in my laboratory to political leaders with whom I have met to discuss our work. And I wouldn't use the word, because it is not descriptive in any way of the science we do.''

The Boston Globe columnist Gareth Cook, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on stem-cell research, has spent time with both Melton and Romney discussing the subject. ''Doug Melton is an incredibly careful person -- he was not at all cavalier about this,'' Cook says. ''Melton has always talked about this the way a lot of biologists do -- that it's not possible to answer the question of what constitutes a human life that should be afforded protections. It's a continuum, and to say that there's a point where life is breathed into something isn't knowable in a scientific way, since you could argue that a skin cell or a sperm cell has the potential to be a human life. He never would have said 'kill.' That's not how he thought about it.''

The meeting ended cordially, with Romney telling the two visitors from Harvard that he would like to stay in touch, though in fact they never communicated again after that day. What happened instead was that Flaherty contacted William Hurlbut, a Stanford bioethicist whose largely untested theory involving altered nuclear transfer -- which uses cells that can't produce a living being rather than embryonic stem cells -- had been the subject of a recent Globe article by Cook. Hurlbut, a strong believer in legally protecting the human status of embryos, agreed to fly to Boston and meet with the governor. Excited by Hurlbut's PowerPoint presentation, Romney exclaimed, according to one aide, ''Why isn't everybody buying into this?'' (''What Hurlbut was floating was just a concept,'' Cook says. ''Obviously I wouldn't have written about it if it were completely impossible or biologically absurd. It's just that nobody's going to do it, because it's just too hard.'') Then Flaherty arranged for a third meeting -- this time with the Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, a Catholic bioethicist and, like Hurlbut, a passionate believer in the human integrity of the embryo.

After these discussions, Flaherty says, ''Mitt wanted to make sure that people had a window into his analysis,'' to explain where he stood. In early 2005, Romney's staff offered an exclusive interview with the governor to a New York Times reporter. The resulting article in The Times, on Feb. 9, disclosed that Romney would oppose the Legislature's embryonic-cloning bill on the grounds that ''there is an ethical boundary that should not be crossed.'' Twelve days later, in a speech to Republicans in Spartanburg, S.C., the Massachusetts governor declared, to great applause, ''Science must respect the sanctity of human life.'' Two weeks after that, Romney wrote an op-ed in The Globe in which he declared, ''Once cloning occurs, a human life is set in motion.'' Finally, in a May 23, 2005, USA Today article that highlighted the presidential hopeful's peculiar status as a Massachusetts Republican, Romney acknowledged to a reporter that ''I'm in a different place'' from his previous commitment not to challenge Roe v. Wade. His evolution on abortion was complete.

But as with his decision to withdraw from RGGI rather than seek to undermine it, Romney's ultimate position on embryonic-stem-cell research seemed to send mixed signals. His amendments to the stem-cell bill would have banned embryonic cloning on the grounds that an embryo constituted human life while at the same time continuing to permit the creation, freezing and eventual destruction of hundreds of thousands of human embryos in I.V.F. clinics, as well as Harvard's acquisition of those embryos for noncloning research. (The Legislature discarded his amendments and passed the bill permitting embryonic cloning, later overriding Romney's veto.) And rather than simply side against Harvard's research on moral grounds, Romney seemed equally determined to show that he had found a better solution than the one offered by the Stem Cell Institute, maintaining in his Globe editorial that ''the greatest successes in stem-cell research to date'' came from Hurlbut's ''promising approach.''

''He displayed an interesting combination of principle and pragmatism,'' Hurlbut recalls. ''Though maybe it's giving me too much credit for the change in his opinion about abortion.''

''Romneys are, by nature, an adventurous breed,'' Mitt Romney proclaimed with no apparent irony in his 2004 book ''Turnaround.'' Today that assertion is hard to square with the author's stiff persona and his risk-averse path to the presidency. But Romney's appetite for boldness marks his governorship, as does his sudden loss of that appetite; and even when policy risk-taking gave way to presidential ambition, perhaps it could be said that Romney was ahead of his time: years before the emergence of the Tea Party, he could see where the Republican Party was headed, and with an audacious turn to the right the Massachusetts governor was there waiting for it.

Should a president-elect Mitt Romney arrive in Washington with the apolitical C.E.O. orientation that he brought to the Massachusetts Statehouse in 2003 -- and with nothing in his record to suggest that he, any more than Obama, can change a political culture ''from the inside'' -- he will almost certainly encounter the same headwinds from the conservative flank of his party that seemed to blow him off course during his term as governor. After four years of Obama, the G.O.P. natives on Capitol Hill are restless. Their dutiful but fidgety optimism was bluntly expressed in a conversation I had with Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho, a freshman, an outspoken Tea Party star and, like Romney, a Mormon. ''Everything in Romney's background tells me he knows how to go into an organization that's not working and make it work,'' Labrador told me.

But to Labrador, a Romney presidency could ''make it work'' only by pursuing a resolutely rightward course. He warned: ''If Romney comes in here and feels like he has to capitulate and govern from the middle of the road, not only will it be disheartening: I predict that you will see the conservatives in the House rise up. We've been pretty quiet -- everybody claims we've been rambunctious, but we've been pretty quiet. I think you'll see something different.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/mitt-romney.html


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY GETTY IMAGES AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLLAGE BY CHRISSIE ABBOTT) (MM26)
The Politician: Melanie's Law, which toughened sentencing for repeat drunken drivers, was one of Romney's early successes as governor in 2005. To his right is Nancy Powell, the mother of Melanie. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL GREENE/ THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES
)
The C.E.O.: Governor Romney ran the state as if it were a corporation, changing the business model and improving the numbers. (PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY MAEDA / THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES)
The Fund-Raiser: Romney greets an Iowa resident before speaking at a Republican Party fund-raiser in Davenport on Oct. 29, 2005. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/ASSOCIATED PRESS) (MM29)
The Odd Couple: Governor Romney and Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the 2006 signing ceremony for their state's new health care reform package. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE/GERRY IMAGES) (MM30)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



597 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


October 7, 2012 Sunday


Oct. 7: National Polls Show Signs of Settling


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1353 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney remains in a considerably stronger polling position than he was before last Wednesday's debate in Denver. But the polls released on Sunday did not tell quite as optimistic a story for him as those in the debate's immediate aftermath.


Mitt Romney remains in a considerably stronger polling position than he was before last Wednesday's debate in Denver. But the polls released on Sunday did not tell quite as optimistic a story for him as those in the debate's immediate aftermath.

The four national tracking polls as published on Sunday were largely unchanged from their Saturday releases. Mr. Romney maintained a 2-point lead in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, but President Obama's lead held at 2 points in an online poll published by Ipsos and at 3 points in the Gallup tracking poll. In the RAND Corporation's online tracking poll, which lists its results to the decimal place, Mr. Obama's lead declined incrementally, to 3.9 percentage points from 4.4 on Saturday.

Only the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll consists of interviews that were conducted entirely after the debate, but the share of post-debate interviews is now large enough in the other polls that we can start to come to some inferences about the overall magnitude of Mr. Romney's bounce.

My effort to do that is reflected in the chart below. I've compared the most recent reading in each poll to the average result that the poll showed in the period between the Democratic convention and the Denver debate. I've also listed the approximate share of interviews in each poll that post-dated the debate.

On average, the four tracking polls showed Mr. Obama with a 3.7 percentage point lead between the convention and the debate. The numbers did seem to fluctuate slightly during this period -- with Mr. Obama polling especially well just after the release of the "47 percent" tape, but then fading a bit early last week, even before the debate. But in general the polls were fairly stable and seemed to reflect a near-term equilibrium for the campaign.

Based on the numbers that the tracking polls published on Sunday, however, Mr. Obama's lead was down to just 1.7 percentage points on average -- a net shift of 2 points toward Mr. Romney since the debate.

But that calculation potentially underestimates Mr. Romney's gains since only about two-thirds of the interviews in these polls were conducted after the debate. If Mr. Romney gained 2 points based on two-thirds of the interviews being conducted after the debate, that would imply a 3-point gain for him based on the post-debate interviews alone.

A 3-point gain for Mr. Romney would be consistent with what candidates received following some of the stronger debate performances in the past. It would also make the national race very close. The FiveThirtyEight "now-cast" had Mr. Obama ahead by an average of about 4.5 percentage points between the conventions and the debate. (This is higher than the average result from the national tracking polls alone, which have been a pinch less favorable to Mr. Obama on balance than the broader consensus of surveys.) A 3-point gain for Mr. Romney would imply that Mr. Obama's advantage is now only 1 or 2 points, putting Mr. Romney well within striking distance depending on how well the rest of the campaign goes for him and how accurate the polls turn out to be.

However, the fact that Mr. Romney did not make further gains in the polls on Sunday can be read as mildly disappointing for him. The way tracking polls work is to replace the oldest day of interviews with fresh interviews conducted the previous day. In the Sunday release of the polls, this meant that interviews from Saturday were replacing a day of interviewing from before the debate. The fact that the Saturday interviews that entered the polls were roughly as strong for Mr. Obama as the predebate day of interviews that they displaced is an encouraging sign for Mr. Obama -- at least as compared with most of the polling news that he has received since the debate.

Of course, making these sorts of inferences based on trying to reverse-engineer just one day's worth of polling is an imprecise exercise. Sunday's evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Mr. Romney initially received a very large bounce in the polls that has since receded some, perhaps in part because of Friday morning's favorable jobs report. But it is not dispositive of it; these methods are too crude to know for sure. The next few days of polling may well be the most interesting and important that we'll see all cycle.

Mr. Romney continues to make gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, which had been sluggish to catch up to his post-debate bounce. The forecast now gives him a 21.6 percent chance of winning the Electoral College on Nov. 6, up from 15.1 percent before the debate.

I feel as though it's my duty to tell you when my subjective estimate of the odds differs by a material amount from the ones that our model produces. On Friday and Saturday, I wrote that I thought the model was underestimating Mr. Romney's chances.

The model is designed to distinguish essentially random changes in the polls from more permanent reversals in the state of play. But it takes a one-size-fits-all approach to do this. Had there been no major developments in the news cycle over the past several days, there would be reason to be skeptical that the shift toward Mr. Romney had been quite as clear as the polls had seemed to imply. There have been other points in the election cycle when the polls appeared to show a shift in the race but without much news to drive it; the model has been fairly "smart" about avoiding being taken by these false alarms.

The trade-off, however, is that the model may be too conservative about accounting for a shift when there is real news behind it. The model is able to account for changes caused by some types of economic reports, since those are incorporated directly into the forecast; we also have special procedures to handle polling around the party conventions. Other types of news events, however -- like the debates, major foreign-policy developments, or the vice presidential selections -- may not be handled very adroitly by the model.

At the same time, the more common error is probably to overrate the importance of near-term shifts in the polls. It's not just that these fluctuations may literally reflect random noise because of the sampling error in polls. It's also the case that polling in presidential general elections has fairly strong mean-reversion tendencies -- a fancy way of saying that some changes may be real, but short-lived. It seems quite possible that Mr. Romney would have had at least an even-money chance of winning an election conducted on Thursday exactly, when his polling was very strong -- but there was apparently less strength in his numbers on Saturday. My subjective estimate of Mr. Romney's chances is still a bit higher than the one our model lists officially, but the gap has closed quite a bit.

This is not to suggest, however, that Mr. Romney did not make tangible and important gains at the debate. Among other things, he presented himself as competent and cool-headed, and managed to shift his positions toward the center without getting too much immediate pushback for it. And he rekindled Republican enthusiasm about his chances, avoiding a potential "death spiral" trap in which Republicans began to redirect resources toward Congressional races.

That's an awful lot to accomplish in one night, especially considering that Mr. Romney's chances had begun to look rather dire before the debate. He may have been a bit unlucky with the jobs report -- no, the numbers aren't rigged -- but there is a lot of statistical variance in the month-to-month reports. But his prospects still look a lot brighter than they did a week ago.

Much of the news media's attention since the debate has been focused on Mr. Obama's poor performance in Denver. From my vantage point, however, it was more Mr. Romney's strong performance that stood out.

If the polls settle in at showing something like a 1- or 2-point lead for Mr. Obama by this point next week, that would be reasonably well in line with where our model and others think that the election "should" be based on economic trends; it would no longer be as appropriate to think of Mr. Romney as being an underachieving candidate.


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



598 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 7, 2012 Sunday


Romney Ad Says Obama Distorts Tax Cut Claim


BYLINE: TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 453 words



HIGHLIGHT: The Romney campaign returned to one of the most contentious issues of the presidential debate to accuse President Obama of falsely claiming Mitt Romney would cut $5 trillion in taxes.


In a television ad released Sunday, the Romney campaign returned to one of the most contentious issues of the presidential debate to accuse President Obama of falsely claiming Mitt Romney would cut $5 trillion in taxes.

Mr. Obama repeated the accusation several times in the debate last Wednesday. Mr. Obama's assertion about the $5 trillion in tax cuts has been a staple of Democrats' accusations that Mr. Romney's economic plans favor the rich.

"President Obama continues to distort Mitt Romney's economic plan,'' the narrator of the ad says. "The latest? Not telling the truth about Mitt Romney's tax plan.''

The ad cites an independent fact-check by The Associated Press and even includes a sound bite of Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama's deputy campaign manager, telling CNN, "Well, okay, stipulated, it won't be near $5 trillion."

The issue turns on semantics as much as math. Mr. Romney has proposed a package of tax cuts, including a 20 percent reduction in marginal income tax rates and zeroing out estate taxes, as well as making permanent the Bush-era tax cuts. Add everything up and the theoretical loss of federal revenue over 10 years is $5 trillion, according to the independent Tax Policy Center.

But that is only half the story. Mr. Romney describes his proposal as "revenue neutral'' - any hole punched in the annual deficit would be filled by eliminating tax deductions on high earners and closing other loopholes.

"I'm not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut,'' Mr. Romney insisted in the debate. "What I've said is I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That's part one. So there's no economist that can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.''

Mr. Romney has left himself open to the Democrats' attacks by not specifying how he would make up the loss in revenue, specifically which tax deductions he would eliminate. And he also counts on his plan to spur economic growth and add to tax collections, a proposition that federal budget experts have difficulty factoring into their estimates.

The issue is hardly going away.

The Obama campaign released its own video on Sunday accusing Mr. Romney of rewriting his earlier proposals during the debates, including the $5 trillion reduction in taxes. "When the cameras rolled, a performance began,'' the video asserted. "But the problem is, that's all it was.''

And on Thursday Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who will face Representative Paul D. Ryan in a vice presidential debate this week, mocked Mr. Romney's claims about his tax proposals. "Last night we found out he doesn't have a $5 trillion tax cut,'' he said. "I guess he outsourced that to China or something.''


LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



599 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


October 7, 2012 Sunday


Toe to Toe


BYLINE: THOMAS B. EDSALL


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 2230 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney has regained the initiative, but will he be able to follow through?


For the past year, conservative and Republican groups have spent more than$138 million in a concerted attempt to turn voters against Barack Obama.

The big dog in the effort to drive up Obama's negative job approval ratings, the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, has invested $82.5 million in independent expenditures, mostly for television ads. Restore Our Future hired Larry McCarthy, the media consultant who achieved both recognition and infamy for producing the Willie Horton commercial in 1988. Restore Our Future's hope: to do to Obama what McCarthy did to Michael Dukakis.

So far in the campaign, the right has outspent the left on independent advertising by just over 3 to 1.

Obama's conservative adversaries have had plenty to work with. Median household income has steadily declined, and, until October's employment report was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, unemployment had remained above 8 percent for the first 44 months of Obama's presidency. Since Obama's November 2008 victory, in fact, the labor force participation rate - the percentage of adults actually working - has fallen from 65.8 percent to 63.6 percent, a 2.2 point drop. In other words, a growing number of men and women have dropped out of the workforce altogether.

Despite this abundance of liabilities, Obama's job approval rating over the past year has gone up, not down. By most measures, the massive anti-Obama television, radio and Internet campaign has been a bust.

Romney's rising poll numbers in the aftermath of the debate on Oct. 3 actually reveal the relative failure of Romney's general election advertising. Millions of dollars in ads couldn't do what one effective debate performance - and a dismal showing by the president - did. By Oct. 6, Romney trailed Obama nationally by only 1.4 points, 47 to 48.4.

No one knows how the interaction of the two remaining presidential debates and the final four weeks of advertising and campaigning will play out, but extensive data suggest that the anti-Obama independent expenditure campaign has faltered in its effort to fatally discredit the president. As of Oct. 6, RealClearPolitics was still projecting a 303-235 Electoral College victory for Obama, although some of the polling data R.C.P. has to work with was collected before the debate and does not fully reflect the dramatic changes afterward.

The survey data on Obama's job favorability tell an interesting story. A full year ago, the final three NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys of 2011 - conducted in August, October and November - found that more voters held unfavorable views of Obama's job performance, 51 percent, than positive views, 44 percent, a net 7 point negative rating.

The most recent NBC/WSJ poll, released the day before the debate, was conducted by Republican Bill McInturff and Democrat Peter Hart and found that this month, after the millions spent by such conservative groups as American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and Americans for Prosperity, Obama's job approval ratings had actually improved to a net positive 49-48, an 8-point gain since the end of 2011.

The same pattern of improvement in Obama's job approval ratings over the past year shows up in the New York Times/CBS polls, the Washington Post/ABC surveys and Gallup.

In an interview, Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for two Republican organizations, the super PAC American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, an affiliated 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization (which together have spent over $32 million attacking Obama), contended that the Gallup tracking poll following Obama's job approval ratings had shown a relatively consistent negative tilt until the conventions this summer.

Collegio noted that after Tampa and Charlotte, "there has been some pro-Obama movement. The question is whether an outside group could create or stop the momentum Obama has had since the convention. That's a very good question."

Carl Forti is involved in almost every aspect of the independent expenditure anti-Obama campaign as the founder of the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, the political director of American Crossroads and a consultant to Crossroads GPS. He disputed the accuracy of NBC, Gallup and other national surveys.

"I'm seeing different numbers," Forti said in a phone interview. After I sent him some of the national data, he replied in an email: "I think it's fair to say that the numbers I'm seeing don't match the national numbers." Forti told me that he cannot "share internal poll data."

In contrast, officials of Priorities USA - the pro-Obama super PAC that has spend $36.2 million attacking Romney - were more than willing to provide evidence of the effectiveness of their ads.

Before the debate, Brennan Bilberry, the research director for Priorities USA, sent me an internal memo from earlier in the summer that includes data from surveys by two Democratic polling firms - Garin-Hart-Yang Research and the Global Strategy Group - of 3,800 voters in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. According to the memo, these surveys found that:

In all five of these swing states, more voters have an unfavorable view of Mitt Romney than a favorable one. On average, Romney's favorable rating across these states is 36 percent favorable and 43 percent unfavorable.

Obama led Mitt Romney in these 5 swing states by 48-42. In addition, half the voters surveyed said that Obama was the best candidate to "stand up for the middle class," compared to 31 percent who thought Romney was.

To determine how effective the Priorities USA ads have been, the pollsters compared media markets where the ads ran to markets where the ads did not run. In the "Priorities markets," Obama had a 49-41 lead over Romney compared to a 46-43 lead in "non-Priorities markets." Romney had a net 9 point negative rating, 35 favorable to 44 unfavorable, in the Priorities markets, compared to a negative five point rating in non-Priorities markets, 37-42.  Obama had an 11 point advantage in the Priorities markets when voters were asked which candidate "is honest and someone you can trust," compared to a 5 point advantage in the non-Priorities markets.

Bilberry also emailed the results of a number of public polls that he felt bolstered Priorities' case:

A USA Today survey from July 8, for example, found that "Obama is the clear winner in the ad wars. Among swing-state voters who say the ads have changed their minds about a candidate, rather than just confirmed what they already thought, 76 percent now support the president, vs. 16 percent favoring Romney."

On July 17, ABC News reported that a Priorities USA ad, "Stage," is the "ad Romney should fear the most."

The commercial is narrated by Mike Earnest, who worked at a paper plant acquired by Bain Capital. He was told to build a 30-foot stage. A few days later, Bain officials used the stage to announce the closing of the plant. "Mitt Romney made over $100 million by shutting down our plant and devastated our lives. Turns out when we build that stage it was like building our own coffin, and it just makes me sick," Earnest says at the end.

The one-minute spot, made by the super PAC supporting President Obama, Priorities USA Action, already has more than 2 million hits on YouTube, more than 10 times any other super PAC ad.

It is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of television advertising, especially political ads. Ace Metrix, Inc., a non-partisan television analytics firm, sells a technique it has developed to quantify the effectiveness of such ads.

Jonathan Symonds, executive vice president of Ace, described the firm's method in an email to The Times. The company collects every political ad with national implications and sends them all out online to panels of viewers made up of 30 percent Republicans, 30 percent Democrats and 40 percent independents. The panelists rate the ads on persuasiveness and watchability on a broad scale designed to improve the results, a score from 1 to 950.

Presidential ads score well below ads for commercial products, 403 to 531. The highest scoring political ad to date was the Priorities USA Stage spot, which got a 562 rating.

Ace Metrix, at the request of The Times, provided average ratings for five groups, three of them conservative - Americans for Prosperity, American Crossroads and Restore Our Future - and two of them liberal - Priorities USA Action and Move On. The findings:

Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)4 tax exempt advocacy group founded by David and Charles Koch, the owners of Koch Industries, held a decisive lead, followed by Priorities USA, American Crossroads and Moveon.org. Restore Our Future, the biggest spender, scored at the bottom.

After Romney's success in the first presidential debate, the numbers may shift, but toward the end of last weekthe averaging of the personal favorability-unfavorability ratings of the two candidates put together by RealClearPolitics continued to give Obama a strong advantage, plus 5.4 points (51.6 to 46.2), compared to Romney's negative 1.2 points (47-48.2).

It's hard to determine the reasons for the slim payoff the pro-Romney forces have gotten in return for their huge investment. At the Denver debate, Romney made a concerted effort to present a more compassionate face and distance himself from earlier gaffes and it was much more effective than ads attacking the president.

One Republican active in the presidential campaign argued that negative campaigning can weaken an incumbent, but that the "the deal can only be closed" by a "quality challenger." The source - who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to be quoted criticizing his party - pointed to the 2010 Senate races in Colorado and Nevada where an onslaught of ads undermined the stature of the Democratic incumbents, Michael Bennett and Harry Reid, respectively. In both cases, the Democrats still won "because the Republicans running against them were lousy candidates."

According to a Republican media specialist who requested anonymity because he does not want to damage future client prospects, "Romney has a Little Lord Fauntleroy quality. He's Richie Rich. People enjoy taking down the top dog."

At this stage in the campaign, Priorities USA has successfully identified Romney's point of vulnerability and made use of a relatively smaller bank account to stick the knife in. (At the time of the most recent filings, Priorities USA, the pro-Obama super PAC, had $4.8 million cash on hand as of Aug. 31; American Crossroads had $32 million; and Restore Our Future had $6.3 million.) The anti-Obama groups have tried multiple avenues of attack - welfare, deficits, slow growth, cutting Medicaid - but none have gained the kind of traction a challenger needs to bring an incumbent president to his knees.

With the benefit of momentum gained from the first debate, the Romney campaign and its conservative allies have four weeks left to capitalize on Obama's vulnerabilities. Obama may have assisted his adversaries with the diffidence and lack of affect he displayed in Denver about the plight of American workers. No matter what happens, this probing of Obama's weaknesses will continue.

The Oct. 5 Bureau of Labor report showing that unemployment had dropped below 8 percent to 7.8 percent is, of course, a huge break for Obama, although whether it came soon enough is impossible to say right now. Imagine, though, if after the dismal debate on Wednesday, the jobs report had been more of the same.

In terms of advertising, the jobs report undermines a central element of the theme being used against Obama. On Oct. 2, American Crossroads had announced an $11 million television buy of anti-Obama commercials beginning with one called "Actually Happened." The now out-of-date spot declares, that "this is what the jobless rate actually is: 8.1 percent."

Obama post-debate ads dispute Romney's claims during the Denver debate, a clear sign that the president's strategists believe they have to slow the challenger's momentum right now. In "How Can We Trust Romney?" the moderator asks

Why won't Romney level with us about his tax plan which gives the wealthy huge new tax breaks? Because according to experts he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class or increase the deficit to pay for it. If we can't trust him here how could we ever trust him here?

"Here" is accompanied by a photograph of the Oval Office.

A second Obama ad, "Mitt Romney Is Not Telling the Truth," repeats the theme:

Mitt Romney didn't tell the truth about his tax plan, his plan for Americans with pre-existing conditions, his Medicare plan, nor the president's Medicare plan. Why would Romney not tell the truth about what he'd do as president? Because his real plans would hurt the middle class.

In large part, the contest over the next four weeks will be a struggle to stay on the offensive. We won't know until Nov. 6 whether the debate marked a decisive turning point, but it has definitely put the president on the defensive and opened up some running room for Romney - a patch of daylight he and his allied super PACs and 501(c)4s have not seen for months.

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics," which was published earlier this year.



LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



600 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Tour de Fours IX: V-o-t-e!


BYLINE: Pat Myers


SECTION: Style; Pg. T20


LENGTH: 992 words


Vel-veto: A smooth, easy-to-swallow but ultimately cheesy rejection: "He gave her the old 'it's not you, it's me' vel-veto."

Love-toad: The once and future prince.

Given that the results to this contest will be published the weekend before Election Day, we figured that the letter block for our ninth annual Tour de Fours neologism contest ought to be pertinent (but shouldn't be a-r-g-h). This week: Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block V, O, T and E and define it, as in the examples above; those four letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. Hyphenate and capitalize (or not) as you wish. Using the word in a funny sentence is fine; using the word in a blah sentence is unfine.

Winner gets the Inkin' Memorial, the bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives a vintage but unused U.S. military surplus "Supporter, Athletic" from 1946. Donated by Loser Andrea Kelly, who dates from well after that. It's the Style Invitational, where we give you an old jock for your new joke.

Other runners-upwin their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug or the ardently desired Grossery Bag. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air "freshener" (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct. 15; results published Nov. 4 (online Nov. 1). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include "Week 991" in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules. The subhead for this week's honorable mentions is by Beverley Sharp. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev.

Report from Week 987

our perennial contest in which we asked contestants to take any headline from a week's worth of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com and follow it with a made-up "bank head," or secondary headline, that either misinterpreted the original or commented humorously on it:

The winner of the Inkin' Memorial

Actual Post headline:Romney: 'The sky seems to be crying'Fake bank head:'It's called rain, sir,' explains butler who had accidentally lowered boss's umbrella(Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.)

2Winner of the Japanese teeny toy potty with rubbery yellow mini-poo: Nats throw away chance at the end, fall to Atlanta New version of 'Gone With the Wind' is big hit in Ga.(Steve Honley, Washington)

3 With Senate at stake, GOP awaits Akin's next move Many hope it's to Paraguay (Howard Walderman, Columbia)

4 Rookie Morris gives ground game just what it needs New Redskins chef makes perfectly seasoned squirrelburgers (Larry Carnahan, Arlington)

The outer banks:honorable mentions

Thousands protest new austerity cuts 'Keep government's hands off our austerity!' protesters chant (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase)

Bound for greatness, but not yet New Obama campaign slogan announced (David Ballard, Reston)

Councilman's license suspended in past Brown says he can't produce document because of 'time warp' problem (Rob Cohen, Potomac)

Obama reaches out to middle-class voters in Colorado GOP accuses president of 'inappropriate touching' (David Genser, Poway, Calif.)

Capitals players prepare for lockout Hide extra Verizon Center key under mat (Rob Wolf, Gaithersburg)

Garcon 'very limited' in practice Maitre d' slams trainee for insufficient snottiness (Ira Allen, Bethesda)

Woolly Mammoth goes to the mat, artfully But mastodon can't master backflip on the balance beam (Gary Sampliner, Rockville, a First Offender)

Prince Harry back in Afghanistan Palace relieved he escaped Vegas to safer locale (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia)

Reiley loses job at MWAA Aunt Edith deemed much better at making kissing noises (Christopher Lamora, Guatemala City)

A rockin' place to be Veranda is most popular area at Lazy Acres Nursing Home (Mae Scanlan, Washington)

Chris Christie versus the world 'May the bigger equator win,' says N.J. governor (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.)

After robbery, church won't change open-door policy Action delayed until door is recovered (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)

Lessons learned in College Park Experimental academic offering complements football program (Elden Carnahan)

Where are all the Redskins bars? Fans complain of poor cellphone reception at FedEx (Matt Monitto, Elon, N.C.)

Tuskegee Airman broke barriers WWII Army deducted barrier cost from his paycheck each month (Mel Loftus, Alexandria)

A 60-day drive to Election Day gets underway Romney vows this time Seamus will ride inside car (Robert Schechter)

DNA considered in MacDonald case Farmer to stick with EIEIO (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg)

Citing leak, Netanyahu defers security meeting 'When you gotta go. . .' prime minister explains (Roy Ashley, Washington)

He had the world on a violin string - until it unraveled New theory of creation poses challenge to Flying Spaghetti Monster (Adam and Russell Beland, Fairfax)

The top cars for tailgating Models with good brakes top the list (Zack Beland, Fairfax)

A president cornered Obama stunned to find his office no longer oval (Ira Allen)

Take the kids this weekend Desperate for break, local mom goes public with plea (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

More messed-with heads in the online Invite at bit.ly/inv991 .

Still running - deadline Monday night - is Week 990, jokes about people with the same last name. See wapo.st/inv990.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



601 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


What's the big idea?


BYLINE: Justin Moyer


SECTION: Outlook; Pg. B03


LENGTH: 342 words


Is Mitt Romney planning a $5 trillion tax cut? Will money saved by ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq help "rebuild America," as President Obama claims?

Many voters rely on the news media and independent fact-checkers to determine when a politician is telling the truth or twisting it. Instead, couldn't we pass laws preventing politicians from lying while running for office? Unfortunately, as election law expert Richard L. Hasen points out in a recent paper, candidates may have a constitutional right to fib.

"It is depressing to think that the Constitution contains within it a right to lie in political campaigns," Hasen writes in "A Constitutional Right to Lie in Campaigns and Elections? ," a paper for the University of California at Irvine's law school. "However, the state may no longer have the power to ban or punish malicious false campaign speech, whether made by candidates or others."

According to Hasen, this year's Supreme Court case U.S. v. Alvarez, which struck down the Stolen Valor Act, protecting a man who falsely claimed that he had received the Medal of Honor, shields candidates who tell tall tales. After Alvarez, obviously incorrect statements that disenfranchise voters could still be prohibited - for example, "Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday." But mendacious politicians, such as "a person who used to be a judge referring to himself as a 'Judge' in an ad" or lying about an endorsement, could still monkey with the truth.

What's the solution? Hasen finds an extrajudicial remedy in what Justice Anthony M. Kennedy calls "counterspeech" - opponents of a lying candidate can "credibly call that candidate a liar."

That is, if they can speak loudly enough.

"With candidates' pants increasingly on fire, and with the wooden noses of campaign consultants growing ever longer, the question is whether counterspeech . . . will be enough to give voters the tools they need to make intelligent choices," Hasen writes.

- Justin Moyer, Outlook editorial aide

moyerj@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



602 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Obama ad: Romney lied on tax cuts


BYLINE: Jerry Markon


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 613 words


ORLANDO - As Mitt Romney took a break from campaigning here Saturday to prepare for the next presidential debate, President Obama's campaign, seeking to slow the momentum his challenger gained from his widely praised performance in the first debate, released a new television ad accusing Romney of lying about taxes during Wednesday night's clash.

The Obama ad, titled "Dishonest,'' says Romney displayed "shocking dishonesty" when he denied from the debate stage that he favors $5 trillion in tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy. Set to dark music, the 33-second spot, which will air in eight battleground states, shows Romney's statement and concludes: "This was dishonest.''

The campaigns have been battling over taxes ever since Romney, during one of the debate's first exchanges, directly challenged Obama's assertion that Romney's tax plan would finance big breaks for the wealthy by wiping out popular deductions for those who earn less than $250,000 a year.

"I know that you and your running mate keep saying that. I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case," Romney said on stage in Denver. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And . . . I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families.''

The statement marked an attempt by Romney to regain his footing on a crucial issue that is at the heart of his agenda for spurring economic growth and creating jobs. The president has held a consistent advantage in public opinion polls on the question of which candidate is more trusted on taxes.

Romney's plan calls for cutting income-tax rates by 20 percent for people at all income levels, repealing the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax and wiping out capital gains taxes for middle-class families. Budget analysts say the cuts would reduce tax revenue by nearly $5 trillion during the next decade. Obama has attacked the plan for the past two months, citing a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that said to avoid increasing deficits, Romney would have to generate an equal sum by cutting various tax breaks that benefit the middle class.

The Romney campaign reacted sharply to the ad, with spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg saying in a statement that "independent fact checkers - and even his own campaign - have admitted that President Obama is spreading falsehoods about Mitt Romney's tax plan. It's clear the President is willing to say and do anything to avoid talking about his own record of fewer jobs, declining incomes and record poverty.''

Romney's campaign has said that it is Obama who has a secret plan to raise taxes on the middle class, an assertion that the new Obama ad also derided as false.

Republicans and even many Democrats concluded that Romney easily won Wednesday's debate, and Obama has since been battling to recover his lost momentum. Those efforts were aided by Friday's 0.3 percent dip in the U.S. unemployment rate, and the president's campaign said Saturday that it was close to raising $1 billion after posting its strongest fundraising month of the year in September, with $181 million.

Romney was spending a quiet day off the campaign trail Saturday, engaged in preparations for the next debate, scheduled for Oct. 16 in New York, aides said. The former Massachusetts governor was scheduled to attend a "victory rally" Saturday evening in Apopka, Fla.

Romney's wife, Ann, made a surprise visit to a Romney campaign office in Orlando on Saturday, a day on which the campaign is asking volunteers to call voters nationwide. She carried two pizzas from Papa John's for the volunteers and made calls to two Orlando voters.

markond@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



603 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


One week does not a campaign make


BYLINE: Dan Balz


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 1146 words


If you're looking for an answer to the question of whether last week's events - Mitt Romney's strong debate performance in Denver and Friday's jobs report that showed unemployment dropping to 7.8 percent - change the trajectory of the presidential campaign, be patient and don't rush to judgment.

There's a lot of noise in the system right now. National polls were already tightening before either of last week's events, after a September in which President Obama appeared to be opening up a real lead over his challenger. By the day of the debate, Obama and Romney were in a statistical tie nationally in almost all the new polls.

Before the debate, however, Obama was looking strong in many of the battleground states - unusually strong, given what we know from past elections about how different states perform. Some state polls taken after the debate but before the unemployment number showed movement toward Romney. More evidence is needed to know what really may be changing.

There's been a demonstrable effect on Romney's campaign since the debate. Republicans once again believe they can win this election. Through much of September, Republican morale was sinking almost by the day, as one poll after another seemed to signal that Romney's path to victory was narrowing so rapidly that his chances of winning appeared to be minimal.

Since Denver, however, Republicans are fired up. Romney may be no better a candidate on the stump than he was before the debate, but because of the debate, he's seen through a new lens, particularly by supporters who badly want to see Obama become a one-term president. That enthusiasm should count for something between now and Election Day. Organizers in Colorado, for example, said the day after the debate that they were seeing an immediate impact in their volunteer enthusiasm. That is no doubt happening in every competitive state.

The impact of the jobless numbers is harder to measure. Breaking through the 8 percent barrier is an enormous psychological boost for the president. As my colleagues David Fahrenthold and Philip Rucker reported in Saturday's paper, it robs Romney of one good argument - that Obama was unable to get the unemployment rate below that level for 43 straight months.

So the consecutive-months streak is now over. But the unemployment rate is still higher at this point in a campaign than it has been since the days of the New Deal. Reducing the jobless rate to below 8 percent is significant but the economy is still far from robust.

Ronald Reagan won reelection in 1984 with a September unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, after peaking at 10.8 percent. His most famous ad from that campaign said it was "morning in America, again."

In this recent recession, the rate peaked at 10 percent. The big difference between Reagan's economy and Obama's is that Reagan could point to growth rates in the year before the election and in the first two quarters of 1984 (when attitudes about the economy begin to harden in the minds of voters) far above anything seen during Obama's presidency.

The good news for Obama is that even before Friday's report there were signs that voters were beginning to feel better about the state of the economy: The percentage saying the country is heading in the right direction had risen in September, although a majority still took a negative view on that question. More Americans were expressing optimism about how the economy would perform in the months ahead.

Will Friday's report accelerate those trends? Or are attitudes on the state of the economy more or less factored into the presidential campaign? It will take some more time for the answer to that question to become clear.

One thing worth watching is whether there is a coming confluence of national polls and battleground state polls - and whether it truly puts Romney in a position to win the election. This year, perhaps more than in any recent election, there have been two campaigns: the one that plays out nationally and the one waged in the handful of battleground states where most of the candidates' time and money has been invested.

Has the 2012 election created a new model in which the battlegrounds perform differently than the national numbers?

Ohio is the prime example this year. Until last week, the polling in Ohio showed Obama with a substantial lead - at least five or six points and in some polls, including one by The Washington Post, even higher. Obama was enjoying a bigger lead in Ohio than he was nationally.

That's out of line with how Ohio has generally performed in relation to the national numbers. Look back at recent elections. In almost all of them, the Democratic nominee has gotten a slightly smaller percentage of the vote in Ohio than he has nationally.

Obama's Ohio number lagged more than a point behind his national number. Al Gore lagged two points behind his national number, although that may have been the result of his decision to pull out of Ohio and put his money into Florida. Bill Clinton ran two to three points lower in Ohio in his two elections than he did nationally. The one exception is John Kerry in 2004. He got 48.5 percent in Ohio (while still losing the state) and 48 percent nationally.

The question is whether something is different about Ohio this year than in past elections. States do change behavior. New Jersey is a classic example. It was once a true swing state, but in the 1990s it became, presidentially at least, a Democratic stronghold. California was once a competitive battleground but now is reliably Democratic.

There's no sign that Ohio is moving that dramatically. But is Ohio now becoming more like Michigan and Pennsylvania? Those two states are still nominally considered swing states but tilt more toward the Democrats, which is why Romney hasn't been able to put them into play this fall.

Have the effects of the auto bailout and now the drop in the national unemployment rate to go along with Ohio's rate - that is below the national average - given Obama a boost in Ohio that changes the equation there? If that's the case, it would have an outsize impact on the shape of the electoral map. Or will Romney's debate performance help to snap Ohio back to its more traditional posture?

Those are among the answers that should become clearer in the days ahead.

balzd@washpost.com

For previous columns by Dan Balz,go to postpolitics.com.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



604 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Is Obama correct in his assertion that tax cuts, 'trickle-down policies' led to the economic crisis?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1021 words


"Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place."

- President Obama, in a new two-minute television ad released Sept. 27 

"This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and go back to deregulation. That is what got us into trouble in the first place."

- Former president Bill Clinton, in an Obama campaign ad running since August

When two different people give virtually the same message in two different ads, it's a good bet that the language has been carefully poll-tested. Both President Obama and former president Bill Clinton assert that Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut financial regulations - which they suggest is a recipe for another economic crisis.

The name "George W. Bush" is never mentioned, but it is certainly implied. This leads to the question: Did the Bush tax cuts cause the economic crisis?

We've been interested in the Clinton comments for some time and never quite got a satisfactory response from the Obama campaign. But Clinton used the vague word "trouble," which could be broadly defined as also meaning higher deficits. (Clinton's staff did not respond to queries about what he meant.) Certainly the Bush tax cuts did play some role in higher deficits, although increased spending played a bigger role.

But Obama is not vague at all. He highlights the tax cuts and then says the "same trickle-down policies" - Democratic code for tax cuts for the wealthy - led to the "crisis." The campaign's back-up material labels that as "economic crisis," thus leaving no ambiguity about his reference.

The Facts

Romney adamantly rejects the idea that he has proposed more tax cuts for the wealthy. His plan would cut tax rates but also eliminate tax deductions, which he says would make the plan revenue-neutral. But no one has proven that his numbers add up, and the respected nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that the available details on the Romney plan suggest taxes would decrease for the wealthy but rise for the middle class.

Romney has advocated repealing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. As for the role of deregulation in the crisis, there certainly has been news reporting showing that the Bush administration generally took a hands-off approach to regulating financial institutions.

But others would note the irony of Clinton citing the perils of deregulation under Bush, because he also is culpable. Clinton signed into law a repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banks - a policy shift that some have said also played a role in the economic crisis. Moreover, Clinton also signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which essentially removed derivatives contracts from regulatory oversight. By many accounts, derivatives, such as the credit default swap, were at the heart of the financial crisis.

While one can argue whether deregulation under Clinton or Bush played a bigger role in the financial crisis, the notion that the Bush tax cuts "led" to the 2008 crisis is especially puzzling. The campaign's backup material for the Obama ad cites only one source - an April 30 column by our colleague Ezra Klein.

There's one problem, though: The column does not back up Obama's statement about tax cuts. Klein mostly laments the fact that, in his view, the Romney campaign does not appear to have new ideas with which to confront today's economic realities.

Just to be sure, we checked with Klein, and here is how he responded: "I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there's no evidence of that."

Indeed, the official government inquiry, the 631-page final reportof the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, makes no mention of the Bush tax cuts. The report, endorsed by every Democrat on the panel, does cite deregulation, but 30 years of deregulation across multiple administrations - not just deregulation in the Bush years.

The Obama campaign said that Obama was referring to all of Bush's policies, not just tax cuts. We think that distinction would be lost on ordinary people. Just like Clinton, Obama mentions only two things: tax cuts and deregulation. He then adds that such "trickle-down policies" led to the crisis - and "trickle down" is Democratic pejorative for "tax cuts for the rich."

Obama campaign deputy press secretary Kara Carscaden said that "the tax cuts contributed to the crisis in multiple ways, including by driving up the deficit, crowding out potential investments that could have promoted sustainable, shared economic growth and leaving the economy vulnerable to speculation-fueled bubbles and high middle-class indebtedness."

The Pinocchio Test

It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters. The financial crisis of 2008 stemmed from a variety of complex factors, in particular the bubble in housing prices and the rise of exotic financial instruments.

Deregulation was certainly an important factor, but as the government commission concluded, the blame for that lies across administrations, not just in the past Republican one.

In any case, the Bush tax cuts belong at the bottom of the list - if at all. Moreover, it is rather strange for the campaign to cite as its source an article that, according to the author, does not support this assertion.

We nearly made this Four Pinocchios but ultimately decided that citing deregulation in conjunction with tax cuts kept this line out of the "whopper" category. Still, in his effort to portray Romney as an echo of Bush, the president really stretches the limits here.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



605 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


A great debate over the status of small business


SECTION: ; Pg. G02


LENGTH: 1374 words


In their first presidential debate, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled over whose policies would benefit small-business owners. ¶ The two debated which firms should qualify as small businesses, especially for tax purposes. Romney pointed out that 54 percent of workers are employed by business owners that pay individual tax rates, not corporate rates. Raising the top rates would deter the most successful business owners from hiring more workers, he said. ¶ The president shot back, insisting that the wealthiest business owners, even if their firms are small, aren't the ones truly in need of tax relief. "Under Gov. Romney's definition, there are a whole bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are small businesses," Obama said. "Donald Trump is a small business." ¶ The Small Business Administration counts companies with as much as $35.5 million in sales and 1,500 employees, depending on the industry.

Business

N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued JPMorgan Chase, accusing it of defrauding mortgage bond investors. The securities in question were issued by Bear Stearns, an investment bank that JPMorgan acquired in 2008. Schneiderman is reportedly looking into the mortgage securities practices of at least a dozen other financial institutions.

Googlereached a settlement with a book publishing group - which includes McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster - in a long-standing battle to create the world's biggest digital library of books and journals. Under the settlement, the publishers will be able to choose whether to make work that Google has scanned available for the project.

Googlesurpassed Microsoft to become the world's second-largest technology company as computing over the Internet reduces demand for software installed on desktop machines. Google shares closed Friday at $767.65, putting the company's value at $251 billion; Microsoft shares were $29.85, and its value $250 billion.

Google's Motorola Mobility unit said it was withdrawing a patent-infringement complaint it filed in August against Apple. Motorola Mobility reserved the right to refile claims.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh lifted her ban on sales of Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer, pending the resolution of a far-reaching patent trial between Apple and Samsung. A jury in September ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1 billion after finding that many of Samsung's products illegally used technology developed by Apple for its iPhones and iPads. But the jury found that Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 wasn't an offending product.

Samsung launched a new assault on Apple, saying the new iPhone violates several of its patents on design and technology.

Sonyhas stopped sales of its Xperia tablet, which went on sale in the United States last month. The new tablet has a manufacturing defect that left it susceptible to water damage.

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook registered its 1 billionth user Sept. 14, eight years after the social-networking site launched at Harvard, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Facebookwill allow U.S. users to pay a $7 fee to give their posts prime placement on friends' news feeds.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has stopped six "massive" tech support scams that may have duped consumers out of millions of dollars by offering a "service" to remove nonexistent viruses and other malware.

Defense contractors Lockheed Martin and BAE backed off threats to issue layoff notices to employees in coming weeks, a move they had said might be required given the threat of mandatory federal budget cuts in January.

American Express will pay $112.5 million to resolve allegations of abusive debt-collection practices, improper late fees and deceptive marketing, regulators announced.

Toyotahad the biggest September gain among automakers, with sales surging 42 percent from last year. Chrysler Group posted a 12 percent gain in its 30th month of year-over-year sales growth.

Deals

Deutsche Telekom, the German company that owns T-Mobile USA, agreed to buy smaller MetroPCS Communications in a deal that could shore up two struggling smaller players in the U.S. wireless industry. The deal would give T-Mobile access to more space on the airwaves. Last year, AT&T struck a deal to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion for much the same reason, but the deal was shot down by regulators.

The Carlyle Group acquired a 55 percent stake in Vermillion Asset Management, a New York commodities investment firm. The investment gives Carlyle, the Washington-based private equity firm that went public this year, direct exposure to commodity investments such as agriculture and energy.

Earnings

Hewlett-Packard said it expects earnings to fall by more than 10 percent next year as chief executive Meg Whitman struggles to fix a range of problems in a weakening economy.

Economy

The U.S. jobless rate fell to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent in July, hitting its lowest point since January 2009. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one. Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts' forecasts.

Fed chief Ben Bernankeoffered a wide-ranging defense of the Fed's policies to stimulate the still-weak economy. The Fed needs to drive down long-term borrowing rates because the economy isn't growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment, Bernanke said. The chairman cautioned Congress against adopting a law that would allow it to monitor the Fed's interest-rate discussions.

Almost 2,400 people who received unemployment insurance benefits in 2009 lived in households with annual incomes of $1 million or more, according to the Congressional Research Service. An additional 954,000 households earning more than $100,000 in the economic downturn also received jobless benefits.

In Europe, unemploymentacross the 17 countries that use the euro remained at its record-high rate of 11.4 percent in August, renewing concerns that efforts to slash debts have sacrificed jobs.

Europe's banks have raised an extra $265 billion in fresh capital since December in a bid to meet new rules aimed at strengthening the ailing sector.

U.S. retailers' September same-store sales topped analysts' estimates, led by discount and specialty-apparel chains and back-to-school shopping.

U.S. manufacturing expanded last month, but data show that the sector is flat-lining.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said its index of nonmanufacturing activity rose to 55.1, up from 53.7 in August. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

Washington

The Obama administration approved the first section of a proposed 146-mile transmission line, calling it a critical upgrade to the faltering Northeast power grid and saying it will eventually create 2,000 jobs.

Transitions

Mitt Romney disavowed his controversial remarks dismissing "the 47 percent" of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes, saying in an interview on Fox News that the comments were "just completely wrong." "This whole campaign is about the 100 percent," he said.

The National Hockey Leaguecanceled the first two weeks of its regular season, the second time games have been lost because of a lockout in seven years. Unable to work out how to split up $3 billion in hockey-related revenue with the players' association, the NHL wiped out 82 games.

Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" are leaving Washington on their first international journey to London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

- From news services and staff reports

i9%One-day change in price of milk in Tehran

Tensions over the plunging value of Iran's currency sparked clashes between protesters and security forces in the capital. The value of the rial has fallen roughly 60 percent over the past year but 30 percent in a week. The rial's dramatic fall has forced a run on hard currency and anxieties over the rocketing prices of food and staples.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



606 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 7, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Why a President Romney would have Obama to thank for an economic recovery Why a President Romney would have Obama to thank for an economic recovery


BYLINE: Greg Ip


SECTION: Outlook; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 1997 words


Cast your mind forward to October 2014. The economic rebound for which Barack Obama had worked so hard and hoped so long is finally underway: Growth is humming, unemployment is steadily dropping, and the stock market is hitting one record high after another. But unfortunately for Obama, he's not in the White House anymore - and President Mitt Romney is the man whose approval ratings are being carried aloft by the Dow.

Romney is widely considered to have won Wednesday night's presidential debate by attacking Obama's economic record and promising, if elected, to restore job growth and middle-class incomes. The irony is that, if Romney wins the election and the economy rebounds on his watch, much of the recovery will be due to efforts undertaken during the Obama administration.

Every president faces two painful, immutable truths about the economy: First, he has far less influence over it than voters think. Second, even when his actions make a difference, it is often not felt until after he's left office, and not always in the expected way.

Consider the two most successful presidents of recent decades. Ronald Reagan is often credited with sparking an economic renaissance by defeating inflation and deregulating the economy. But it was Jimmy Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve that spelled the death knell for inflation (not to mention Carter's reelection bid), and the deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads all began under Carter's watch.

Similarly, the economic boom during Bill Clinton's presidency was kick-started by an extended decline in long-term interest rates, which began with the budget deal George H.W. Bush signed in 1990 at great personal cost. And if you want to go really big-picture, the technology bubble that gilded Clinton's second term can be traced to investments in computer-network technology that began under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Of course, not everything presidents bequeath to their successors turns out well. Obama's term has been cursed by the effects of a financial crisis that bears the fingerprints of every president going back to Lyndon Johnson, who turned mortgage giant Fannie Mae over to private shareholders, as well as Carter, who ushered in the era of deregulated finance by loosening interest-rate controls. And for all the problems George W. Bush left for Obama, he also did him one big favor by creating the bailout fund that helped end the crisis.

Paradoxically, the same forces that made for such a weak recovery during Obama's first term suggest that the next four years will be better, regardless of who holds the White House. Right now, businesses, households and governments are all trying to wrestle down their debts. That "deleveraging" saps spending and blunts the power of low interest rates. But eventually it ends, on average six to seven years after the debt (as a percentage of GDP) peaks, according to the McKinsey Global Institute and a study by economists Carmen and Vince Reinhart.

For the United States, that means sometime between 2013 and 2016, depending on which measure of debt one chooses. Households have already whittled their debts down, often by defaulting; banks have rebuilt their capital; and home prices, which hit bottom in January, are rising steadily.

So, how will historians judge the economic legacy of Obama's first term? There will be black marks, such as his failure to produce a lasting solution to America's deficits, in particular the rising cost of Medicare. Indeed, the biggest near-term threat to economic recovery remains tightening government budgets, in particular the "fiscal cliff," a withering combination of tax increases and spending cuts that could automatically take effect in January. Yet, historians will probably also see many things that laid the groundwork for stronger growth in later years. Here are the most notable:

Reappointing Ben Bernanke

Presidents often come to regret their Fed chairman appointments; Volcker helped doom Carter's reelection chances, and George H.W. Bush suspected Alan Greenspan of doing the same for his.

Obama announced the 2009 reappointment of Bernanke, a Republican, largely because of Bernanke's aggressive response to the financial crisis. While the Fed chief has since tried to boost growth with repeated rounds of quantitative easing - the purchase of bonds with newly printed money - some Obama supporters have groused that he isn't trying hard enough.

Last month, though, the Fed broke new ground by committing to open-ended bond buying until unemployment has fallen substantially, even if inflation tops the Fed's 2 percent target. Since monetary policy works with a lag, this is probably too late to help Obama's reelection chances much. But it will be a boon to whomever occupies the White House starting next year. Moreover, by waiting until he had built a consensus inside the Fed, Bernanke is more likely to see his policy survive, even if a future president replaces him, as Romney promises to do.

Making the banks safe

Under Obama, banks have been forced to hold hundreds of billions of dollars in additional capital to absorb potential losses and to exit risky lines of business, such as trading for their own accounts. If they need a bailout, they must suffer a draconian government-run restructuring that wipes out their shareholders. Debit cards, credit cards and derivatives are all less lucrative businesses. U.S. banks are the best capitalized they've been in at least 20 years.

Of course, spreading smaller profits over more equity capital is a recipe for lousy shareholder returns. Ed Najarian of the brokerage firm ISI Group estimates that the market now values big banks at 20 percent less than their book value while valuing regional banks at 80 percent more - a source of deep frustration to big banks but an effective disincentive to any bank to get too big to fail.

Much of the new regulation is overkill, and Obama has probably hurt growth and himself by raising the cost of credit. But in the process, he has done future presidents a favor. There will be new financial crises, but banks aren't likely to be the cause for a long time.

Encouraging innovation

Government funding has long been critical to basic research that lacks commercial appeal. In the 1950s, Eisenhower's Pentagon created the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funded the development of network technology that later became the Internet. Gerald Ford's Energy Department funded demonstration projects and research into technology for extracting natural gas from dense shale rock; decades later, abundant shale gas has revolutionized America's energy supply.

Obama has emulated those examples, creating a DARPA clone to fund hundreds of small, early-stage energy projects. His stimulus package lavished loans and grants to companies and labs working on alternative energy.

Every venture capitalist knows that for every big success, there are many failures. Unfortunately for presidents, that means the failures are early and high-profile (think Solyndra), while the successes may not show up for years - and may be utterly unrecognizable when they do. Shane Greenstein, a Northwestern University business professor who has traced the history of the Internet, notes that the creators of DARPA never saw it as an incubator of commercial technologies; it was "motivated by a desire to do innovative military work outside the structure of the existing military units."

Someday, one of the projects the Obama administration has backed is going to produce a breakthrough - probably long after this president has left office.

Boosting human capital

While the biggest problem in the job market today is the lack of demand for employees, in the long run it's the mismatch between the growing demand for college-educated workers and the slower-growing supply. Three decades ago, the share of Americans who had graduated from college was the second highest among advanced countries; now, it ranks 15th.

That's starting to change. In 2009, a record 70 percent of high school graduates went on to college that fall. Though the rate has slipped slightly since, it remains high by historical standards. Most of the credit goes to simple incentives: College graduates earn far more than high school graduates, and high unemployment has diminished the options for those without a degree. But Obama has done his part by significantly increasing the size and number of Pell grants for low-income students, enriching the tax credit for college education, overhauling federal student aid and seeking to crack down on for-profit colleges that saddle their students with too much debt and not enough employment success.

This won't make a difference to the economy anytime soon, but if enrollment stays high, it will in the years to come ease the shortage of skilled labor that hobbles so many American companies.

Keeping calm on China

The final part of Obama's term for which future presidents may be grateful is that he didn't start a trade war with China. Ordinarily, you wouldn't thank a president just for avoiding stupid things. Yet all the ingredients were there: a decade of rising Chinese trade surpluses and shrinking American factory employment, a devastating recession, a protectionist Congress and electorate, a Democratic president indebted to organized labor, and a Chinese leadership fearful of appearing weak to its people.

Yet Obama initiated only one serious, unilateral action against China: a tariff on tires in 2009. Other moves were either made by apolitical trade bureaucrats responding to private complaints or initiated through the World Trade Organization, a neutral forum that China and the United States scrupulously respect. A study by Chad Bown of the World Bank and Meredith Crowley of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that protectionism during the last recession was far lower than what previous patterns predicted.

Obama has faced frequent pressure from many in Congress to label China a currency manipulator and impose compensating tariffs - a development that could trigger a cycle of retaliation between Beijing and Washington that would damage trade and raise geopolitical tensions. With the help of House Speaker John Boehner, Obama has sidestepped those pressures. His administration, like Bush's before it, has instead used the threat of congressional action as leverage in back-channel negotiations with the Chinese. And indeed, the yuan has steadily risen and is no longer seriously undervalued - one reason U.S. exports to China have soared and manufacturing employment is on the mend.

No one knows whether China's rise will remain peaceful, as that of the United States was in the 1800s, or not, like Germany's a century ago. Either way, how an American president handles China is one of the few things that, a century from now, will really make a difference. Depending on how it ends, both Obama and Bush stand to get plenty of credit - or blame.

It is ironic that presidents are so often accused of short-term thinking when so much of what they do shows results, for better or for worse, only in the very long run. If a few years from now Romney finds himself presiding over an economic boom, he should remember that and offer a quiet word of thanks to his predecessors, including the man he defeated in November.

outlook@washpost.com

Greg Ip is the U.S. economics editor of the Economist and the author of "The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World."

Read more of Greg Ip's essays in Outlook:

Think the bailout is radical? Just wait.

The Republicans' new voodoo economics

Five myths about the Federal Reserve

Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



607 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


What's the big idea?


BYLINE: Justin Moyer


SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B03


LENGTH: 337 words


Is Mitt Romney planning a $5 trillion tax cut? Will money saved by ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq help "rebuild America," as President Obama claims?

Many voters rely on the news media and independent fact-checkers to determine when a politician is telling the truth or twisting it. Instead, couldn't we pass laws preventing politicians from lying while running for office? Unfortunately, as election law expert Richard L. Hasen points out in a recent paper, candidates may have a constitutional right to fib.

"It is depressing to think that the Constitution contains within it a right to lie in political campaigns," Hasen writes in "A Constitutional Right to Lie in Campaigns and Elections? ," a paper for the University of California at Irvine's law school. "However, the state may no longer have the power to ban or punish malicious false campaign speech, whether made by candidates or others."

According to Hasen, this year's Supreme Court case U.S. v. Alvarez,which struck down the Stolen Valor Act, protecting a man who falsely claimed that he had received the Medal of Honor, shields candidates who tell tall tales. AfterAlvarez, obviously incorrect statements that disenfranchise voters could still be prohibited - for example, "Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday." But mendacious politicians, such as "a person who used to be a judge referring to himself as a 'Judge' in an ad" or lying about an endorsement, could still monkey with the truth.

What's the solution? Hasen finds an extrajudicial remedy in what Justice Anthony M. Kennedy calls "counterspeech" - opponents of a lying candidate can "credibly call that candidate a liar."

That is, if they can speak loudly enough.

"With candidates' pants increasingly on fire, and with the wooden noses of campaign consultants growing ever longer, the question is whether counterspeech . . . will be enough to give voters the tools they need to make intelligent choices," Hasen writes.

- Justin Moyer, Outlook editorial aide

moyerj@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



608 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


Obama ad: Romney lied on tax cuts


BYLINE: Jerry Markon


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 611 words


DATELINE: ORLANDO


ORLANDO - As Mitt Romney took a break from campaigning here Saturday to prepare for the next presidential debate, President Obama's campaign, seeking to slow the momentum his challenger gained from his widely praised performance in the first debate, released a new television ad accusing Romney of lying about taxes during Wednesday night's clash.

The Obama ad, titled "Dishonest,'' says Romney displayed "shocking dishonesty" when he denied from the debate stage that he favors $5 trillion in tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy. Set to dark music, the 33-second spot, which will air in eight battleground states, shows Romney's statement and concludes: "This was dishonest.''

The campaigns have been battling over taxes ever since Romney, during one of the debate's first exchanges, directly challenged Obama's assertion that Romney's tax plan would finance big breaks for the wealthy by wiping out popular deductions for those who earn less than $250,000 a year.

"I know that you and your running mate keep saying that. I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case," Romney said on stage in Denver. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And . . . I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families.''

The statement marked an attempt by Romney to regain his footing on a crucial issue that is at the heart of his agenda for spurring economic growth and creating jobs. The president has held a consistent advantage in public opinion polls on the question of which candidate is more trusted on taxes.

Romney's plan calls for cutting income-tax rates by 20 percent for people at all income levels, repealing the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax and wiping out capital gains taxes for middle-class families. Budget analysts say the cuts would reduce tax revenue by nearly $5 trillion during the next decade. Obama has attacked the plan for the past two months, citing a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that said to avoid increasing deficits, Romney would have to generate an equal sum by cutting various tax breaks that benefit the middle class.

The Romney campaign reacted sharply to the ad, with spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg saying in a statement that "independent fact checkers - and even his own campaign - have admitted that President Obama is spreading falsehoods about Mitt Romney's tax plan. It's clear the President is willing to say and do anything to avoid talking about his own record of fewer jobs, declining incomes and record poverty.''

Romney's campaign has said that it is Obama who has a secret plan to raise taxes on the middle class, an assertion that the new Obama ad also derided as false.

Republicans and even many Democrats concluded that Romney easily won Wednesday's debate, and Obama has since been battling to recover his lost momentum. Those efforts were aided by Friday's 0.3 percent dip in the U.S. unemployment rate, and the president's campaign said Saturday that it was close to raising $1 billion after posting its strongest fundraising month of the year in September, with $181 million.

Romney was spending a quiet day off the campaign trail Saturday, engaged in preparations for the next debate, scheduled for Oct. 16 in New York, aides said. The former Massachusetts governor was scheduled to attend a "victory rally" Saturday evening in Apopka, Fla.

Romney's wife, Ann, made a surprise visit to a Romney campaign office in Orlando on Saturday, a day on which the campaign is asking volunteers to call voters nationwide. She carried two pizzas from Papa John's for the volunteers and made calls to two Orlando voters.

markond@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



609 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


A great debate over the status of small business


SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. G02


LENGTH: 1340 words


In their first presidential debate, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled over whose policies would benefit small-business owners. ¶ The two debated which firms should qualify as small businesses, especially for tax purposes. Romney pointed out that 54 percent of workers are employed by business owners that pay individual tax rates, not corporate rates. Raising the top rates would deter the most successful business owners from hiring more workers, he said. ¶ The president shot back, insisting that the wealthiest business owners, even if their firms are small, aren't the ones truly in need of tax relief. "Under Gov. Romney's definition, there are a whole bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are small businesses," Obama said. "Donald Trump is a small business." ¶ The Small Business Administration counts companies with as much as $35.5 million in sales and 1,500 employees, depending on the industry.

Business

N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued JPMorgan Chase, accusing it of defrauding mortgage bond investors. The securities in question were issued by Bear Stearns, an investment bank that JPMorgan acquired in 2008. Schneiderman is reportedly looking into the mortgage securities practices of at least a dozen other financial institutions.

Google reached a settlement with a book publishing group - which includes McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Schuster - in a long-standing battle to create the world's biggest digital library of books and journals. Under the settlement, the publishers will be able to choose whether to make work that Google has scanned available for the project.

Google surpassed Microsoft to become the world's second-largest technology company as computing over the Internet reduces demand for software installed on desktop machines. Google shares closed Friday at $767.65, putting the company's value at $251 billion; Microsoft shares were $29.85, and its value $250 billion.

Google's Motorola Mobility unit said it was withdrawing a patent-infringement complaint it filed in August against Apple. Motorola Mobility reserved the right to refile claims.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh lifted her ban on sales of Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer, pending the resolution of a far-reaching patent trial between Apple and Samsung. A jury in September ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1 billion after finding that many of Samsung's products illegally used technology developed by Apple for its iPhones and iPads. But the jury found that Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 wasn't an offending product.

Samsung launched a new assault on Apple, saying the new iPhone violates several of its patents on design and technology.

Sony has stopped sales of its Xperia tablet, which went on sale in the United States last month. The new tablet has a manufacturing defect that left it susceptible to water damage.

Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook registered its 1 billionth user Sept. 14, eight years after the social-networking site launched at Harvard, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Facebook will allow U.S. users to pay a $7 fee to give their posts prime placement on friends' news feeds.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has stopped six "massive" tech support scams that may have duped consumers out of millions of dollars by offering a "service" to remove nonexistent viruses and other malware.

Defense contractors Lockheed Martin and BAE backed off threats to issue layoff notices to employees in coming weeks, a move they had said might be required given the threat of mandatory federal budget cuts in January.

American Express will pay $112.5 million to resolve allegations of abusive debt-collection practices, improper late fees and deceptive marketing, regulators announced.

Toyota had the biggest September gain among automakers, with sales surging 42 percent from last year. Chrysler Group posted a 12 percent gain in its 30th month of year-over-year sales growth.

Deals

Deutsche Telekom, the German company that owns T-Mobile USA, agreed to buy smaller MetroPCS Communications in a deal that could shore up two struggling smaller players in the U.S. wireless industry. The deal would give T-Mobile access to more space on the airwaves. Last year, AT&T struck a deal to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion for much the same reason, but the deal was shot down by regulators.

The Carlyle Group acquired a 55 percent stake in Vermillion Asset Management, a New York commodities investment firm. The investment gives Carlyle, the Washington-based private equity firm that went public this year, direct exposure to commodity investments such as agriculture and energy.

Earnings

Hewlett-Packard said it expects earnings to fall by more than 10 percent next year as chief executive Meg Whitman struggles to fix a range of problems in a weakening economy.

Economy

The U.S. jobless rate fell to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent in July, hitting its lowest point since January 2009. Unlike in August, the number improved for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for jobs, but because far more people reported having one. Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts' forecasts.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke offered a wide-ranging defense of the Fed's policies to stimulate the still-weak economy. The Fed needs to drive down long-term borrowing rates because the economy isn't growing fast enough to reduce high unemployment, Bernanke said. The chairman cautioned Congress against adopting a law that would allow it to monitor the Fed's interest-rate discussions.

Almost 2,400 people who received unemployment insurance benefits in 2009 lived in households with annual incomes of $1 million or more, according to the Congressional Research Service. An additional 954,000 households earning more than $100,000 in the economic downturn also received jobless benefits.

In Europe, unemployment across the 17 countries that use the euro remained at its record-high rate of 11.4 percent in August, renewing concerns that efforts to slash debts have sacrificed jobs.

Europe's banks have raised an extra $265 billion in fresh capital since December in a bid to meet new rules aimed at strengthening the ailing sector.

U.S. retailers' September same-store sales topped analysts' estimates, led by discount and specialty-apparel chains and back-to-school shopping.

U.S. manufacturing expanded last month, but data show that the sector is flat-lining.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said its index of nonmanufacturing activity rose to 55.1, up from 53.7 in August. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion.

Washington

The Obama administration approved the first section of a proposed 146-mile transmission line, calling it a critical upgrade to the faltering Northeast power grid and saying it will eventually create 2,000 jobs.

Transitions

Mitt Romney disavowed his controversial remarks dismissing "the 47 percent" of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes, saying in an interview on Fox News that the comments were "just completely wrong." "This whole campaign is about the 100 percent," he said.

The National Hockey League canceled the first two weeks of its regular season, the second time games have been lost because of a lockout in seven years. Unable to work out how to split up $3 billion in hockey-related revenue with the players' association, the NHL wiped out 82 games.

Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" are leaving Washington on their first international journey to London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

- From news services and staff reports

i9%One-day change in price of milk in Tehran

Tensions over the plunging value of Iran's currency sparked clashes between protesters and security forces in the capital. The value of the rial has fallen roughly 60 percent over the past year but 30 percent in a week. The rial's dramatic fall has forced a run on hard currency and anxieties over the rocketing prices of food and staples.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



610 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


Why a President Romney would have Obama to thank for an economic recovery Why a President Romney would have Obama to thank for an economic recovery


BYLINE: Greg Ip


SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 1952 words


Cast your mind forward to October 2014. The economic rebound for which Barack Obama had worked so hard and hoped so long is finally underway: Growth is humming, unemployment is steadily dropping, and the stock market is hitting one record high after another. But unfortunately for Obama, he's not in the White House anymore - and President Mitt Romney is the man whose approval ratings are being carried aloft by the Dow.

Romney is widely considered to have won Wednesday night's presidential debate by attacking Obama's economic record and promising, if elected, to restore job growth and middle-class incomes. The irony is that, if Romney wins the election and the economy rebounds on his watch, much of the recovery will be due to efforts undertaken during the Obama administration.

Every president faces two painful, immutable truths about the economy: First, he has far less influence over it than voters think. Second, even when his actions make a difference, it is often not felt until after he's left office, and not always in the expected way.

Consider the two most successful presidents of recent decades. Ronald Reagan is often credited with sparking an economic renaissance by defeating inflation and deregulating the economy. But it was Jimmy Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve that spelled the death knell for inflation (not to mention Carter's reelection bid), and the deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads all began under Carter's watch.

Similarly, the economic boom during Bill Clinton's presidency was kick-started by an extended decline in long-term interest rates, which began with the budget deal George H.W. Bush signed in 1990 at great personal cost. And if you want to go really big-picture, the technology bubble that gilded Clinton's second term can be traced to investments in computer-network technology that began under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Of course, not everything presidents bequeath to their successors turns out well. Obama's term has been cursed by the effects of a financial crisis that bears the fingerprints of every president going back to Lyndon Johnson, who turned mortgage giant Fannie Mae over to private shareholders, as well as Carter, who ushered in the era of deregulated finance by loosening interest-rate controls. And for all the problems George W. Bush left for Obama, he also did him one big favor by creating the bailout fund that helped end the crisis.

Paradoxically, the same forces that made for such a weak recovery during Obama's first term suggest that the next four years will be better, regardless of who holds the White House. Right now, businesses, households and governments are all trying to wrestle down their debts. That "deleveraging" saps spending and blunts the power of low interest rates. But eventually it ends, on average six to seven years after the debt (as a percentage of GDP) peaks, according to the McKinsey Global Institute and a study by economists Carmen and Vince Reinhart.

For the United States, that means sometime between 2013 and 2016, depending on which measure of debt one chooses. Households have already whittled their debts down, often by defaulting; banks have rebuilt their capital; and home prices, which hit bottom in January, are rising steadily.

So, how will historians judge the economic legacy of Obama's first term? There will be black marks, such as his failure to produce a lasting solution to America's deficits, in particular the rising cost of Medicare. Indeed, the biggest near-term threat to economic recovery remains tightening government budgets, in particular the "fiscal cliff," a withering combination of tax increases and spending cuts that could automatically take effect in January. Yet, historians will probably also see many things that laid the groundwork for stronger growth in later years. Here are the most notable:

Reappointing Ben Bernanke

Presidents often come to regret their Fed chairman appointments; Volcker helped doom Carter's reelection chances, and George H.W. Bush suspected Alan Greenspan of doing the same for his.

Obama announced the 2009 reappointment of Bernanke, a Republican, largely because of Bernanke's aggressive response to the financial crisis. While the Fed chief has since tried to boost growth with repeated rounds of quantitative easing - the purchase of bonds with newly printed money - some Obama supporters have groused that he isn't trying hard enough.

Last month, though, the Fed broke new ground by committing to open-ended bond buying until unemployment has fallen substantially, even if inflation tops the Fed's 2 percent target. Since monetary policy works with a lag, this is probably too late to help Obama's reelection chances much. But it will be a boon to whomever occupies the White House starting next year. Moreover, by waiting until he had built a consensus inside the Fed, Bernanke is more likely to see his policy survive, even if a future president replaces him, as Romney promises to do.

Making the banks safe

Under Obama, banks have been forced to hold hundreds of billions of dollars in additional capital to absorb potential losses and to exit risky lines of business, such as trading for their own accounts. If they need a bailout, they must suffer a draconian government-run restructuring that wipes out their shareholders. Debit cards, credit cards and derivatives are all less lucrative businesses. U.S. banks are the best capitalized they've been in at least 20 years.

Of course, spreading smaller profits over more equity capital is a recipe for lousy shareholder returns. Ed Najarian of the brokerage firm ISI Group estimates that the market now values big banks at 20 percent less than their book value while valuing regional banks at 80 percent more - a source of deep frustration to big banks but an effective disincentive to any bank to get too big to fail.

Much of the new regulation is overkill, and Obama has probably hurt growth and himself by raising the cost of credit. But in the process, he has done future presidents a favor. There will be new financial crises, but banks aren't likely to be the cause for a long time.

Encouraging innovation

Government funding has long been critical to basic research that lacks commercial appeal. In the 1950s, Eisenhower's Pentagon created the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funded the development of network technology that later became the Internet. Gerald Ford's Energy Department funded demonstration projects and research into technology for extracting natural gas from dense shale rock; decades later, abundant shale gas has revolutionized America's energy supply.

Obama has emulated those examples, creating a DARPA clone to fund hundreds of small, early-stage energy projects. His stimulus package lavished loans and grants to companies and labs working on alternative energy.

Every venture capitalist knows that for every big success, there are many failures. Unfortunately for presidents, that means the failures are early and high-profile (think Solyndra), while the successes may not show up for years - and may be utterly unrecognizable when they do. Shane Greenstein, a Northwestern University business professor who has traced the history of the Internet, notes that the creators of DARPA never saw it as an incubator of commercial technologies; it was "motivated by a desire to do innovative military work outside the structure of the existing military units."

Someday, one of the projects the Obama administration has backed is going to produce a breakthrough - probably long after this president has left office.

Boosting human capital

While the biggest problem in the job market today is the lack of demand for employees, in the long run it's the mismatch between the growing demand for college-educated workers and the slower-growing supply. Three decades ago, the share of Americans who had graduated from college was the second highest among advanced countries; now, it ranks 15th.

That's starting to change. In 2009, a record 70 percent of high school graduates went on to college that fall. Though the rate has slipped slightly since, it remains high by historical standards. Most of the credit goes to simple incentives: College graduates earn far more than high school graduates, and high unemployment has diminished the options for those without a degree. But Obama has done his part by significantly increasing the size and number of Pell grants for low-income students, enriching the tax credit for college education, overhauling federal student aid and seeking to crack down on for-profit colleges that saddle their students with too much debt and not enough employment success.

This won't make a difference to the economy anytime soon, but if enrollment stays high, it will in the years to come ease the shortage of skilled labor that hobbles so many American companies.

Keeping calm on China

The final part of Obama's term for which future presidents may be grateful is that he didn't start a trade war with China. Ordinarily, you wouldn't thank a president just for avoiding stupid things. Yet all the ingredients were there: a decade of rising Chinese trade surpluses and shrinking American factory employment, a devastating recession, a protectionist Congress and electorate, a Democratic president indebted to organized labor, and a Chinese leadership fearful of appearing weak to its people.

Yet Obama initiated only one serious, unilateral action against China: a tariff on tires in 2009. Other moves were either made by apolitical trade bureaucrats responding to private complaints or initiated through the World Trade Organization, a neutral forum that China and the United States scrupulously respect. A study by Chad Bown of the World Bank and Meredith Crowley of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that protectionism during the last recession was far lower than what previous patterns predicted.

Obama has faced frequent pressure from many in Congress to label China a currency manipulator and impose compensating tariffs - a development that could trigger a cycle of retaliation between Beijing and Washington that would damage trade and raise geopolitical tensions. With the help of House Speaker John Boehner, Obama has sidestepped those pressures. His administration, like Bush's before it, has instead used the threat of congressional action as leverage in back-channel negotiations with the Chinese. And indeed, the yuan has steadily risen and is no longer seriously undervalued - one reason U.S. exports to China have soared and manufacturing employment is on the mend.

No one knows whether China's rise will remain peaceful, as that of the United States was in the 1800s, or not, like Germany's a century ago. Either way, how an American president handles China is one of the few things that, a century from now, will really make a difference. Depending on how it ends, both Obama and Bush stand to get plenty of credit - or blame.

It is ironic that presidents are so often accused of short-term thinking when so much of what they do shows results, for better or for worse, only in the very long run. If a few years from now Romney finds himself presiding over an economic boom, he should remember that and offer a quiet word of thanks to his predecessors, including the man he defeated in November.

outlook@washpost.com

Greg Ipis the U.S. economics editor of the Economist and the author of "The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World."

Read more of Greg Ip's essays in Outlook:

Think the bailout is radical? Just wait.

The Republicans' new voodoo economics

Five myths about the Federal Reserve

Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



611 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


One week does not a campaign make


BYLINE: Dan Balz


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 1125 words


If you're looking for an answer to the question of whether last week's events - Mitt Romney's strong debate performance in Denver and Friday's jobs report that showed unemployment dropping to 7.8 percent - change the trajectory of the presidential campaign, be patient and don't rush to judgment.

There's a lot of noise in the system right now. National polls were already tightening before either of last week's events, after a September in which President Obama appeared to be opening up a real lead over his challenger. By the day of the debate, Obama and Romney were in a statistical tie nationally in almost all the new polls.

Before the debate, however, Obama was looking strong in many of the battleground states - unusually strong, given what we know from past elections about how different states perform. Some state polls taken after the debate but before the unemployment number showed movement toward Romney. More evidence is needed to know what really may be changing.

There's been a demonstrable effect on Romney's campaign since the debate. Republicans once again believe they can win this election. Through much of September, Republican morale was sinking almost by the day, as one poll after another seemed to signal that Romney's path to victory was narrowing so rapidly that his chances of winning appeared to be minimal.

Since Denver, however, Republicans are fired up. Romney may be no better a candidate on the stump than he was before the debate, but because of the debate, he's seen through a new lens, particularly by supporters who badly want to see Obama become a one-term president. That enthusiasm should count for something between now and Election Day. Organizers in Colorado, for example, said the day after the debate that they were seeing an immediate impact in their volunteer enthusiasm. That is no doubt happening in every competitive state.

The impact of the jobless numbers is harder to measure. Breaking through the 8 percent barrier is an enormous psychological boost for the president. As my colleagues David Fahrenthold and Philip Rucker reported in Saturday's paper, it robs Romney of one good argument - that Obama was unable to get the unemployment rate below that level for 43 straight months.

So the consecutive-months streak is now over. But the unemployment rate is still higher at this point in a campaign than it has been since the days of the New Deal. Reducing the jobless rate to below 8 percent is significant but the economy is still far from robust.

Ronald Reagan won reelection in 1984 with a September unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, after peaking at 10.8 percent. His most famous ad from that campaign said it was "morning in America, again."

In this recent recession, the rate peaked at 10 percent. The big difference between Reagan's economy and Obama's is that Reagan could point to growth rates in the year before the election and in the first two quarters of 1984 (when attitudes about the economy begin to harden in the minds of voters) far above anything seen during Obama's presidency.

The good news for Obama is that even before Friday's report there were signs that voters were beginning to feel better about the state of the economy: The percentage saying the country is heading in the right direction had risen in September, although a majority still took a negative view on that question. More Americans were expressing optimism about how the economy would perform in the months ahead.

Will Friday's report accelerate those trends? Or are attitudes on the state of the economy more or less factored into the presidential campaign? It will take some more time for the answer to that question to become clear.

One thing worth watching is whether there is a coming confluence of national polls and battleground state polls - and whether it truly puts Romney in a position to win the election. This year, perhaps more than in any recent election, there have been two campaigns: the one that plays out nationally and the one waged in the handful of battleground states where most of the candidates' time and money has been invested.

Has the 2012 election created a new model in which the battlegrounds perform differently than the national numbers?

Ohio is the prime example this year. Until last week, the polling in Ohio showed Obama with a substantial lead - at least five or six points and in some polls, including one by The Washington Post, even higher. Obama was enjoying a bigger lead in Ohio than he was nationally.

That's out of line with how Ohio has generally performed in relation to the national numbers. Look back at recent elections. In almost all of them, the Democratic nominee has gotten a slightly smaller percentage of the vote in Ohio than he has nationally.

Obama's Ohio number lagged more than a point behind his national number. Al Gore lagged two points behind his national number, although that may have been the result of his decision to pull out of Ohio and put his money into Florida. Bill Clinton ran two to three points lower in Ohio in his two elections than he did nationally. The one exception is John Kerry in 2004. He got 48.5 percent in Ohio (while still losing the state) and 48 percent nationally.

The question is whether something is different about Ohio this year than in past elections. States do change behavior. New Jersey is a classic example. It was once a true swing state, but in the 1990s it became, presidentially at least, a Democratic stronghold. California was once a competitive battleground but now is reliably Democratic.

There's no sign that Ohio is moving that dramatically. But is Ohio now becoming more like Michigan and Pennsylvania? Those two states are still nominally considered swing states but tilt more toward the Democrats, which is why Romney hasn't been able to put them into play this fall.

Have the effects of the auto bailout and now the drop in the national unemployment rate to go along with Ohio's rate - that is below the national average - given Obama a boost in Ohio that changes the equation there? If that's the case, it would have an outsize impact on the shape of the electoral map. Or will Romney's debate performance help to snap Ohio back to its more traditional posture?

Those are among the answers that should become clearer in the days ahead.

balzd@washpost.com

For previous columns by Dan Balz,go to postpolitics.com.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



612 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 7, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


Is Obama correct in his assertion that tax cuts, 'trickle-down policies' led to the economic crisis?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1010 words


"Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place."

- President Obama, in a new two-minute television ad released Sept. 27

"This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and go back to deregulation. That is what got us into trouble in the first place."

- Former president Bill Clinton, in an Obama campaign ad running since August

When two different people give virtually the same message in two different ads, it's a good bet that the language has been carefully poll-tested. Both President Obama and former president Bill Clinton assert that Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut financial regulations - which they suggest is a recipe for another economic crisis.

The name "George W. Bush" is never mentioned, but it is certainly implied. This leads to the question: Did the Bush tax cuts cause the economic crisis?

We've been interested in the Clinton comments for some time and never quite got a satisfactory response from the Obama campaign. But Clinton used the vague word "trouble," which could be broadly defined as also meaning higher deficits. (Clinton's staff did not respond to queries about what he meant.) Certainly the Bush tax cuts did play some role in higher deficits, although increased spending played a bigger role.

But Obama is not vague at all. He highlights the tax cuts and then says the "same trickle-down policies" - Democratic code for tax cuts for the wealthy - led to the "crisis." The campaign's back-up material labels that as "economic crisis," thus leaving no ambiguity about his reference.

The Facts

Romney adamantly rejects the idea that he has proposed more tax cuts for the wealthy. His plan would cut tax rates but also eliminate tax deductions, which he says would make the plan revenue-neutral. But no one has proven that his numbers add up, and the respected nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that the available details on the Romney plan suggest taxes would decrease for the wealthy but rise for the middle class.

Romney has advocated repealing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. As for the role of deregulation in the crisis, there certainly has been news reporting showing that the Bush administration generally took a hands-off approach to regulating financial institutions.

But others would note the irony of Clinton citing the perils of deregulation under Bush, because he also is culpable. Clinton signed into law a repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banks - a policy shift that some have said also played a role in the economic crisis. Moreover, Clinton also signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which essentially removed derivatives contracts from regulatory oversight. By many accounts, derivatives, such as the credit default swap, were at the heart of the financial crisis.

While one can argue whether deregulation under Clinton or Bush played a bigger role in the financial crisis, the notion that the Bush tax cuts "led" to the 2008 crisis is especially puzzling. The campaign's backup material for the Obama ad cites only one source - an April 30 column by our colleague Ezra Klein.

There's one problem, though: The column does not back up Obama's statement about tax cuts. Klein mostly laments the fact that, in his view, the Romney campaign does not appear to have new ideas with which to confront today's economic realities.

Just to be sure, we checked with Klein, and here is how he responded: "I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there's no evidence of that."

Indeed, the official government inquiry, the 631-page final reportof the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, makes no mention of the Bush tax cuts. The report, endorsed by every Democrat on the panel, does cite deregulation, but 30 years of deregulation across multiple administrations - not just deregulation in the Bush years.

The Obama campaign said that Obama was referring to all of Bush's policies, not just tax cuts. We think that distinction would be lost on ordinary people. Just like Clinton, Obama mentions only two things: tax cuts and deregulation. He then adds that such "trickle-down policies" led to the crisis - and "trickle down" is Democratic pejorative for "tax cuts for the rich."

Obama campaign deputy press secretary Kara Carscaden said that "the tax cuts contributed to the crisis in multiple ways, including by driving up the deficit, crowding out potential investments that could have promoted sustainable, shared economic growth and leaving the economy vulnerable to speculation-fueled bubbles and high middle-class indebtedness."

The Pinocchio Test

It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters. The financial crisis of 2008 stemmed from a variety of complex factors, in particular the bubble in housing prices and the rise of exotic financial instruments.

Deregulation was certainly an important factor, but as the government commission concluded, the blame for that lies across administrations, not just in the past Republican one.

In any case, the Bush tax cuts belong at the bottom of the list - if at all. Moreover, it is rather strange for the campaign to cite as its source an article that, according to the author, does not support this assertion.

We nearly made this Four Pinocchios but ultimately decided that citing deregulation in conjunction with tax cuts kept this line out of the "whopper" category. Still, in his effort to portray Romney as an echo of Bush, the president really stretches the limits here.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: October 7, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



613 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 6, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Of Hooters, Zombies And Senators


BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 21


LENGTH: 824 words


Today, let's take a look at debates that do not involve Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. You can thank me later.

I am talking about the races for the United States Senate, people. Attention must be paid! And, as a reward, we can also discuss a new campaign ad featuring zombies.

There are 33 Senate contests this year, although voters in some of the states may not have noticed there's anything going on. In Texas, for instance, Paul Sadler, a Democrat, has had a tough time getting any attention in his battle against the Tea Party fan favorite Ted Cruz. Except, perhaps, when he called Cruz a ''troll'' in their first debate.

In Utah, Scott Howell, a Democrat, has been arguing that if the 78-year-old Senator Orrin Hatch wins, he might ''die before his term is through.'' Suggesting a longtime incumbent is over the hill is a venerable election technique, but you really are supposed to be a little more delicate about it. Howell also proposed having 29 debates. The fact that Hatch agreed to only two was, he claimed, proof of the senator's fading stamina.

Nobody in Massachusetts could have missed the fact that there's a Senate race going on. In their last debate, Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren sounded like two angry squirrels trapped in a small closet. A high point came when the candidates were asked to name their ideal Supreme Court justice. ''That's a great question!'' said Brown brightly, in what appeared to be a stall for time. He came up with Antonin Scalia. Then, after boos from the audience, Brown added more names, until he had picked about half the current court, from John Roberts to Sonia Sotomayor.

Meanwhile, in Nebraska, the Democrat Bob Kerrey began his debate remarks with: ''First of all, let me assure you that I'm still Bob Kerrey.'' This seemed to be a bad sign.

There are actually about only a dozen Senate races in which there is serious suspense about who's going to win. To the Republicans' dismay, many of them are in states that were supposed to be a lock for the G.O.P.

Tea Party pressure produced several terrible candidates. We have all heard about Todd Akin in Missouri, who claimed after a recent debate that Senator Claire McCaskill wasn't sufficiently ''ladylike.'' Since then, Akin has doubled down on a claim that doctors frequently perform abortions on women who aren't pregnant.

In others, the Republicans found awful candidates without any help from the far right.

Senator Bill Nelson in Florida received the gift of Representative Connie Mack IV as his Republican opponent, and promptly unveiled an ad calling Mack ''a promoter for Hooters with a history of barroom brawling, altercation and road rage.'' Mack's fortunes seem to have been sliding ever since. Recently, while he was greeting voters at a Donut Hole cafe, one elderly couple asked him to get them a menu.

Some Democratic candidates are also turning out to be stronger than anticipated -- like Arizona's Richard Carmona, a Hispanic physician who served as surgeon general under President George W. Bush. Carmona is a Vietnam combat veteran who worked as a SWAT team leader for the Pima County Sheriff's Department. ''In 1992,'' his campaign biography reports, ''he rappelled from a helicopter to rescue a paramedic stranded on a mountainside when their medevac helicopter crashed during a snowstorm, inspiring a made-for-TV movie.''

Let that be a lesson. If the Democrats in Texas had just nominated a Hispanic Vietnam combat veteran who saved crash victims and inspired a TV movie, they wouldn't have to depend on debates to get some attention.

The race where the Democrats are getting a nasty surprise is in Connecticut, where Representative Chris Murphy is having a tough time against the Republican Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling mogul. McMahon has spent a record $70 million of her own money over the past three years trying to convince voters that what Connecticut really needs is a senator who knows how to create jobs in a simulated sport awash in violence, sexism and steroid abuse.

Improbable candidates who don't have $70 million to blanket their state in ads can always just cobble something really weird together, put it up on the Web and hope it goes viral.

Last time around, Carly Fiorina, who was running for Senate in California, created a sensation with ''Demon Sheep,'' featuring an actor wearing a sheep mask with glowing red eyes.

Now John Dennis, the Republican opponent of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has a new California sheep-themed conversation-starter. It portrays Pelosi as the leader of a cult of zombies, preparing a lamb for sacrifice. Then Dennis breaks in, saves the lamb, calls one of the zombies ''Dude,'' and denounces Pelosi for supporting the indefinite detention of American citizens who are suspected of being terrorists.

Not your typical Republican. Dennis ran against Pelosi before and got 15 percent of the vote. But I feel the zombie ad could well push him up into the 20s.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/opinion/collins-of-hooters-zombies-and-senators.html


LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



614 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 6, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Romney at the Debate: A Second Look


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTERS; Pg. 20


LENGTH: 555 words


To the Editor:

Re ''Moderate Mitt Returns!,'' by David Brooks (column, Oct. 5):

To quote Jerry Seinfeld: ''Really?''

Mr. Brooks prefers to call Mitt Romney's 11th-hour change ''progress'' rather than hypocrisy. If Mr. Romney had shown the courage of conviction to endorse these newfound policies during the Republican debating season, then I would have applauded the display of moderation, and the courage to stand up to the Tea Party orthodoxy. But now? It surely represents nothing, if not his total lack of courage of conviction.

It does prove that the only thing ''authentic'' about Mr. Romney is his cynicism about the intelligence of his audience, as he plays to the crowd and tells it what he thinks it wants to hear.

President Obama's poor performance at the debate notwithstanding, can anyone in this country -- either on the left or the right, or anywhere in between -- truly believe anything Mr. Romney says from this day forth?

And I ask Mr. Brooks: Can you believe anything Mitt Romney says? Really?

LEONARD CIMET East Setauket, N.Y., Oct. 5, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks suggests to readers in effect that they should comfortably ignore as disingenuous what Mitt Romney has been saying daily for a year and accept as genuine what he said on Wednesday. And though a central focus of Mr. Romney's campaign is reducing the deficit, and Mr. Brooks asserts that ''yes, it's true. Romney's tax numbers don't add up,'' we should ignore that because his debate performance was impressive.

Ignore Mr. Romney's yearlong assertions that he will institute a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut with no explanation of how he will pay for it, because now he explains that he will help offset the cost by cutting off support of public television (one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget) while not touching the defense budget (20 percent)?

I truly hope that the electorate is more discerning than Mr. Brooks.

JOHN WILLIAMS New York, Oct. 5, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks's column includes a clear reductio ad absurdum when he says that in the debate Mitt Romney ''at long last, began the process of offering a more authentic version of himself.''

Authentic people don't offer ''versions'' of themselves.

PAUL OPPENHEIM Yarmouth, Me., Oct. 5, 2012

To the Editor:

Re ''Romney's Sick Joke,'' by Paul Krugman (column, Oct. 5): To Mitt Romney, who has never had to worry about health insurance coverage, it doesn't matter that millions would be left out in the cold with respect to being denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.

What does matter is that we have a candidate from the G.O.P. who will lie and say anything to anyone at any time to get a political contribution or a vote.

On the other side we have Barack Obama, who stood up for the millions of uninsured families in America and took the politically dangerous action of fighting for and winning health care coverage for all of us.

As a former chief executive in the for-profit and nonprofit health care sectors, I've seen what not having health insurance coverage does to families, and it is not anything anyone would want to face in his lifetime.

Quality affordable health care coverage should be the birthright of every American, and as the greatest society the world has ever known, it is our responsibility to ensure that right.

HENRY A. LOWENSTEIN New York, Oct. 5, 2012


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/opinion/romney-at-the-debate-a-second-look.html


LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Letter


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



615 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


October 6, 2012 Saturday


Oct. 6: Romney Maintains Poll Momentum


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 757 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the first presidential debate and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast.


Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate. Mr. Romney's gains in the polls have been sharp enough that he should continue to advance in the FiveThirtyEight forecast if he can maintain his numbers over the next couple of days.

Four of the five national polls published on Saturday showed improvement for Mr. Romney. In the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, which conducted about two-thirds of its interviews after the debate, he went from a two-point deficit against Barack Obama to a two-point lead. Mr. Romney gained two points in the Gallup tracking poll, which now shows him down by three. He also gained roughly 1.5 percentage points in the RAND Corporation's online tracking poll, reversing a gain that Mr. Obama had made on Friday. And a companion pair of polls published by Clarus Research Group just before and after the debate showed a five-point swing toward Mr. Romney. He trailed Mr. Obama by four points in a poll that Clarus Research Group conducted on Tuesday night, before the debate, but led him by one point in a poll they conducted on Thursday.

All of these national surveys except for the Clarus Research Group poll still contain some predebate interviews, meaning that they may underestimate the gains that Mr. Romney may eventually realize. This particularly holds for the Gallup and RAND Corporation tracking polls, which use seven-day filed periods; only about 30 percent of the interviews in those polls postdate the debate. In general, the surveys seem to be consistent with a universe in which Mr. Romney has been polling about evenly with Mr. Obama nationwide in interviews conducted after the debates.

There were few state polls published on Saturday, but a Gravis Marketing poll of Colorado also showed a sharp reversal toward Mr. Romney. He led in its newest survey, which was conducted on Thursday after the debate, by 3.5 percentage points. Although Gravis Marketing polls have had a very strong Republican lean so far this cycle, the trend in the poll is nevertheless extremely favorable for Mr. Romney, since he had trailed Mr. Obama by roughly five percentage points in a poll it conducted in September.

The only poll in which Mr. Romney failed to make gains on Saturday was in the online tracking poll published by Ipsos. That survey showed Mr. Obama holding onto a two-point lead among likely voters, the same as in the poll Ipsos published on Friday, although the numbers were still improved for Mr. Romney from the surveys it had been publishing before the debate.

If there is any silver lining for Mr. Obama in these data, it may be that polls of registered voters show a weaker trend toward Mr. Romney than polls of likely voters. He still leads Mr. Romney by six points in the version of the Ipsos poll among registered voters, for instance, and the Gallup tracking poll, which is conducted among registered rather than likely voters, has not shown an especially sharp shift toward Mr. Romney so far.

Why is this factor favorable for Mr. Obama? Because likely voter polls can be more sensitive than registered voter polls to temporary swings in voter enthusiasm, which sometimes reverse themselves as there are new developments in the news cycle.

More broadly, although it is clear that Mr. Romney has made gains, it is still too early to tell how long-lasting they might be. Many of the polls that showed the sharpest swing toward Mr. Romney were conducted on Thursday, immediately after the debate and on a very unfavorable day of news coverage for Mr. Obama, and will not yet reflect any change in voter sentiment from Friday morning's favorable jobs report.

Still, as I wrote yesterday, my guess is that the forecast model is still being somewhat too conservative about accounting for the change in the environment. In a good number of the polls, Mr. Romney has not only improved his own standing but also taken voters away from Mr. Obama's column, suggesting that he has peeled off some of Mr. Obama's softer support in addition to gaining ground among undecided voters.



LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



616 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 6, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST


Unemployment dips to 7.8%, a four-year low


BYLINE: Michael A. Fletcher;Neil Irwin


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 991 words


The nation's jobless rate dropped to its lowest point in nearly four years in September. And unlike some recent declines, this one happened for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for a job, but because far more people reported having one.

It is a surprising improvement in a job market that had appeared listless in recent months. Although employers added a modest 114,000 jobs in September, the unemployment rate dropped sharply, from 8.1 to 7.8 percent, the government reported Friday.

Unemployment is at its lowest level since President Obama took office in January 2009, offering him a political boost just days after his performance was widely judged as lackluster during a debate against GOP rival Mitt Romney.

The government said hourly wages were up and employees worked more hours in September, meaning they were taking home bigger checks. Overall, the ratio of the American population with a job reached its highest level since May 2010.

The drop in the unemployment rate was bolstered by revisions reflecting that employers had added 86,000 more jobs than previously known in July and August, recasting the troubling summer lull in job creation to a season of solid employment gains.

Although the report offered a brightening picture of the nation's labor market, the overall rate of job creation remains less than robust. In addition, unemployment remains far above normal levels, and many millions who have jobs are not working full time.

"While the September employment report was more encouraging than the ones we have seen in recent months, the job market is still a long way from rosy, good health," said Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist.

This year, employers have added only slightly more jobs per month than are needed to keep pace with normal labor-force expansion, and slightly fewer than the 153,000 average monthly gain the nation experienced in 2011. Also, the number of Americans working part-time - even though they want full-time jobs - rose sharply last month to 8.6 million.

With economic growth creeping along after showing signs of more vigorous expansion last year, some economists were skeptical of the magnitude of September's unemployment decline. A few even predicted that the jobless rate would tick up in the coming months.

"This was a pretty good report, but the drop in the unemployment rate was just too good to be true and probably overstates the degree of improvement in the job market," said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

Even at 7.8 percent, the joblessness rate remains high by any historical standard. And it could be years before the economy returns to full employment.

But Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, said the dichotomy between the recent steep decline in the jobless rate and the slow economic growth in recent months could mean that the economy is poised to take off.

Economic "growth may turn out to be stronger than most economists currently forecast," he said. " . . . Employers are, thus, cautiously turning more optimistic about the economy in 2013 and becoming less apprehensive about hiring."

There is evidence that consumers are feeling better about the state of the economy: The Conference Board's consumer confidence number was up in September, as was a similar University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment.

The new jobs report was heartily embraced by Obama, who had left many of his supporters feeling anxious after Wednesday night's presidential debate.

"The unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs," Obama said during a rally at George Mason University.

Romney played down the report, saying it reflected, at best, halting improvement. "This is not what a real recovery looks like," Romney said in a statement. "We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July."

The September unemployment rate fell dramatically despite the mediocre number of 114,000 jobs created. That's because the government's survey of American households - which determines the jobless rate - reported substantially stronger employment gains than a survey of employers - which establishes the overall job number.

Some analysts say this divergence may have been a fluke, while others said it could signal that gains in self-employment and in business start-ups were not captured in the overall job figure.

The two numbers should even out over time, economists said. About 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, the largest increase since 1983. About 456,000 fewer people reported not having a job but wanting one.

"The rule of thumb when the two surveys tell different stories in the same month is to give much more weight to what" employers say, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "Nevertheless, the September household survey provides a reason to be a little more optimistic about job opportunities for American workers than we have been in recent months."

The private sector added jobs for the 31st consecutive month, and the long decline in government work that has been a significant drag on the economy is reversing. Federal, state and local government added 10,000 jobs, and revised figures for the previous two months showed an increase of 63,000 public-sector jobs.

The generally low-paying retail sector added 9,400 jobs last month, while real estate added 7,100, an indication that the housing market is beginning the heal. Restaurants added 15,700 jobs in September, roughly their monthly average over the past year.

Manufacturing employment, which has been a bright spot since the recession ended more than three years ago and a focus of the Obama administration, fell by 16,000 jobs in September after dropping by 22,000 the prior month.

fletcherm@washpost.com

irwinn@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



617 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 6, 2012 Saturday 5:13 PM EST


NRCC cancels ad reservations in four districts


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 669 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

FIRST ON THE FIX: 

* The National Republican Congressional Committee has canceled ad reservations in four districts, according to a GOP ad buyer. The NRCC has canceled the remainder of its buys in districts held by Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), both of whom are favored to win reelection. The committee has also pulled reservations in two districts in Iowa - the 3rd, where Reps. Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R) face one another, and in the 4th, where Rep. Steve King (R) faces former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack. Both races are competitive but also have gotten significant investments from the Congressional Leadership Fund, another Republican outside group. The NRCC has not yet canceled its reservation for the final week in King's district.

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Barack Obama 2012 = Ronald Reagan 1984?

Why Linda McMahon has a fighting chance in Connecticut

Mitt Romney's "47 percent" mea culpa, explained

The biggest political dynasty in all 50 states

President Obama's much-needed good news on jobs

If the jobs report is status quo, who wins?

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Americans Elect, the group that was originally formed to help elevate a third-party presidential candidate, launched an ad supporting former independent governor Angus King's Maine Senate campaign. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) helped fund the ad. The Maine Republican Party has filed an FEC complaint, citing illegal coordination concerns. 

* National Democrats appear increasingly serious about competing in the Arizona Senate race, where former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) faces Rep. Jeff Flake (R). The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reserved an additional $500,000 in airtime there, on top of a previous $526,000 investment. 

* Elizabeth Warren's (D) new TV ad in the Massachusetts Senate race touts her effort to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and includes a 2010 quote from President Obama. "President Obama calls her one of the 'fiercest advocates for the middle class,' " says the narrator. Meanwhile, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Warren on  Friday, saying: "I heard about her from my Uncle Ted. She worked with him for 15 years on issues that matter for working families."

* The Commission on Presidential Debates defended the job Jim Lehrer did Wednesday night in Denver. "Lehrer implemented the format exactly as it was designed by the CPD and announced in July," the commission said in a statement. As to Lehrer's take on criticism he's received, the veteran of 12 debates said: "So what?"

* Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch accused Obama of cooking the latest monthly jobs numbers Friday, in a tweet. He doubled down in a later interview, saying, "I wasn't kidding," and told MSNBC he had no evidence for his claim. Welch is a supporter of Mitt Romney. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Lifelong Republican Jon Huntsman Sr., father of former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr., is crossing party lines to endorse Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), who is facing a tough challenge from Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love. Huntsman Jr. defeated Matheson in Utah's 2004 gubernatorial race. 

* New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) took action when she saw a toddler left in a running vehicle parked outside a drug store Wednesday. Martinez alerted the store clerk and her security team called the police. Martinez later gave the toddler's father a talking to. 

* Comedian Steve Martin endorses former senator Bob Kerrey's (D) Nebraska Senate candidacy in a web video. He also shows us all how to build a wad of paper. 

THE FIX MIX:

Just, you know, hanging out. 

With Aaron Blake 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



618 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 6, 2012 Saturday 4:24 PM EST


Dueling studies in new ads by Romney and Obama;
Each side likes to point to "independent" studies to make their case.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1149 words


 "Who will raise taxes on the middle class? According to an independent, non-partisan study, Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000. The same organization says the plan from Mitt Romney and common-sense conservatives is not a tax hike on the middle class."

- voiceover from a new Mitt Romney campaign ad

 "Why won't Romney level with us about his tax plan, which gives the wealthy huge new tax breaks? Because according to experts, he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class - or increase the deficit to pay for it."

- voiceover from new Obama campaign ad

Dueling studies!

Politicians love nothing more than to point to an "independent" study that backs up their political position. Thus, in the first presidential debate, President Obama could claim that GOP rival Mitt Romney has a plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion, with tax breaks for the wealthy and tax hikes for the middle-class. And Romney could adamantly deny that, citing six studies of his own.

 There is usually less to such studies than the claims they are said to support. Let's explore how such studies are used in new advertisements the campaigns released just hours after the debate ended.

The Facts

 First, the Romney ad. The "independent, nonpartisan" organization cited by the Romney campaign is the American Enterprise Institute, which bills itself as "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise." A who's who of Republican heavyweights - such as Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Thiessen, Danielle Pletka, John Yoo, and John Bolton - is affiliated with it, but in order to maintain its tax status as a 501(c)3 organization it cannot proclaim any political affiliation.

AEI is one of the top think tanks in Washington, and its scholars are respected and not ideologically consistent. But most people would regard it as right-leaning.

 The Romney campaign probably wants to tag AEI as nonpartisan because the group that produced the study that Obama cited, the Tax Policy Center, often is described as nonpartisan. The Tax Policy Center is affiliated with the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution - and Brookings is frequently seen as the left's counterpart to AEI. The Tax Policy Center has staff who have served in administrations of both parties. Indeed, the Romney campaign once referred to another Tax Policy Center study as an "objective, third-party analysis."

The first study mentioned in the Romney ad - supposedly showing "Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000" - is actually a very dry report titled "A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation." The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obama's budget. (Current law refers to policies that are supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts expire.)

 Among the three scenarios, there's actually not much difference - for households making between $100,000 to $200,000, the burden would be between $2,800 to $5,400 a year through 2022 - and the administration's budget falls right in the middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad claims, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.

Presumably, a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided detailed plans. "We aren't really able to run the overall numbers for Romney because we were trying to use the plans for which we had good budget projections," said Matthew Jensen, one of the co-authors.

 Indeed, the study also looks how the distributional burden rose under George W. Bush - and he of course cut taxes, repeatedly. So just because the debt burden rises, that is not proof that a president will raise taxes.

"The ad correctly states what was outlined in the American Enterprise Institute's study," a Romney spokesman said.

 The second study mentioned in the ad is actually an article for AEI's online magazine, titled "The Romney Tax Plan: Not a Tax Hike on the Middle Class." Author Alex Brill said he was motivated to write it because he believed "all the ads the Democrats are running are false" because they claim Romney plans to raises taxes on the middle class. In the article, Brill tries to discredit the Tax Policy Center study.

The difficulty is that there is no fully detailed Romney plan that explains how he would reconcile his twin goals of reducing tax rates across the board and then closing enough loopholes to make it revenue neutral. The Tax Policy Center concluded it could not be done without raising taxes on the middle class - hence the Democratic ads - but the head of the Tax Policy Center cautioned:  "I don't interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives."

This is where the new Obama ad falls short, because it states as a fact that he will "give the wealthy huge new tax breaks." He says that is not his plan, though he has not shown how he will achieved his claimed goal of not giving large tax cuts to the rich.

 Moreover, Romney has been inconsistent in describing the impact of his tax plan on the wealthy. In this week's debate, he declared, "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." But in the GOP Arizona debate in February, he said: "We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent."

The Pinocchio Test

 In this battle of campaign ads,  the Obama campaign comes out ahead because it accurately describes the Tax Policy Center study as posing an either-or proposition - raising taxes or boosting the deficit. But it goes too far in claiming that Romney would give the wealthy huge new tax breaks, when he insists that is not the case - and the head of the Tax Policy Center says the study has been misinterpreted. The Obama ad earns One Pinocchio.

 By contrast, the Romney campaign really pushes the envelope to claim the AEI study shows that Obama "will raise taxes on the middle class." That's not what the study says - by a long shot. The Romney ad earns Three Pinocchios.

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



619 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 6, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition


Unemployment dips to 7.8%, a four-year low


BYLINE: Michael A. Fletcher;Neil Irwin


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 989 words


The nation's jobless rate dropped to its lowest point in nearly four years in September. And unlike some recent declines, this one happened for the right reason: not because people gave up looking for a job, but because far more people reported having one.

It is a surprising improvement in a job market that had appeared listless in recent months. Although employers added a modest 114,000 jobs in September, the unemployment rate dropped sharply, from 8.1 to 7.8 percent, the government reported Friday.

Unemployment is at its lowest level since President Obama took office in January 2009, offering him a political boost just days after his performance was widely judged as lackluster during a debate against GOP rival Mitt Romney.

The government said hourly wages were up and employees worked more hours in September, meaning they were taking home bigger checks. Overall, the ratio of the American population with a job reached its highest level since May 2010.

The drop in the unemployment rate was bolstered by revisions reflecting that employers had added 86,000 more jobs than previously known in July and August, recasting the troubling summer lull in job creation to a season of solid employment gains.

Although the report offered a brightening picture of the nation's labor market, the overall rate of job creation remains less than robust. In addition, unemployment remains far above normal levels, and many millions who have jobs are not working full time.

"While the September employment report was more encouraging than the ones we have seen in recent months, the job market is still a long way from rosy, good health," said Gary Burtless, a Brookings Institution economist.

This year, employers have added only slightly more jobs per month than are needed to keep pace with normal labor-force expansion, and slightly fewer than the 153,000 average monthly gain the nation experienced in 2011. Also, the number of Americans working part-time - even though they want full-time jobs - rose sharply last month to 8.6 million.

With economic growth creeping along after showing signs of more vigorous expansion last year, some economists were skeptical of the magnitude of September's unemployment decline. A few even predicted that the jobless rate would tick up in the coming months.

"This was a pretty good report, but the drop in the unemployment rate was just too good to be true and probably overstates the degree of improvement in the job market," said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

Even at 7.8 percent, the joblessness rate remains high by any historical standard. And it could be years before the economy returns to full employment.

But Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, said the dichotomy between the recent steep decline in the jobless rate and the slow economic growth in recent months could mean that the economy is poised to take off.

Economic "growth may turn out to be stronger than most economists currently forecast," he said. " . . . Employers are, thus, cautiously turning more optimistic about the economy in 2013 and becoming less apprehensive about hiring."

There is evidence that consumers are feeling better about the state of the economy: The Conference Board's consumer confidence number was up in September, as was a similar University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment.

The new jobs report was heartily embraced by Obama, who had left many of his supporters feeling anxious after Wednesday night's presidential debate.

"The unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office. More Americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs," Obama said during a rally at George Mason University.

Romney played down the report, saying it reflected, at best, halting improvement. "This is not what a real recovery looks like," Romney said in a statement. "We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July."

The September unemployment rate fell dramatically despite the mediocre number of 114,000 jobs created. That's because the government's survey of American households - which determines the jobless rate - reported substantially stronger employment gains than a survey of employers - which establishes the overall job number.

Some analysts say this divergence may have been a fluke, while others said it could signal that gains in self-employment and in business start-ups were not captured in the overall job figure.

The two numbers should even out over time, economists said. About 873,000 more Americans reported having jobs in the survey of households, the largest increase since 1983. About 456,000 fewer people reported not having a job but wanting one.

"The rule of thumb when the two surveys tell different stories in the same month is to give much more weight to what" employers say, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "Nevertheless, the September household survey provides a reason to be a little more optimistic about job opportunities for American workers than we have been in recent months."

The private sector added jobs for the 31st consecutive month, and the long decline in government work that has been a significant drag on the economy is reversing. Federal, state and local government added 10,000 jobs, and revised figures for the previous two months showed an increase of 63,000 public-sector jobs.

The generally low-paying retail sector added 9,400 jobs last month, while real estate added 7,100, an indication that the housing market is beginning the heal. Restaurants added 15,700 jobs in September, roughly their monthly average over the past year.

Manufacturing employment, which has been a bright spot since the recession ended more than three years ago and a focus of the Obama administration, fell by 16,000 jobs in September after dropping by 22,000 the prior month.

fletcherm@washpost.com

irwinn@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



620 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 5, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


G.O.P. Operative Long Trailed By Allegations of Voter Fraud


BYLINE: By STEPHANIE SAUL; Derek Willis contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 1357 words


For a year, the Republican National Committee has portrayed Democrats as the villains when it comes to voter fraud.

In a provocative article on CNN's Web site, the committee's chairman, Reince Priebus, said, ''Democrats know they benefit from election fraud.''

The tables have turned, however, and Republicans are now playing defense over the role of a well-paid operative, Nathan Sproul, in a voter registration scandal that emerged in Florida and has spread to other states.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said it was reviewing ''numerous'' claims involving a company that Mr. Sproul runs to determine if a criminal investigation is warranted. Complaints have surfaced in 10 Florida counties, among them allegations that registrations had similar signatures or false addresses, or were filed under the names of dead people. In other cases, party affiliations appeared to have been changed.

In recent days, similar claims against Mr. Sproul have arisen in Nevada and Colorado.

Mr. Sproul, 40, a former executive director of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Republican Party in Arizona, is well known in political circles there. Since 2004, Mr. Sproul's companies -- he has operated under several corporate names -- have collected more than $17.6 million from Republican committees, candidates and the ''super PAC'' American Crossroads, mostly for voter registration operations, according to campaign finance records.

The Republican Party, which paid Mr. Sproul about $3 million this year for work in five states, has severed its ties with him, saying it has no tolerance for voter registration fraud.

But questions about Mr. Sproul's methods first emerged in 2004, when one of his companies, Sproul & Associates, was paid nearly $8 million during the election cycle. The payouts made the company the seventh-biggest recipient of campaign expenditures by the committee, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Sproul declined to be interviewed.

In a statement issued by his lawyer, Mr. Sproul said the huge size of his voter operation -- he claims to have registered more than 500,000 people in more than 40 states through election cycles -- would invariably lead to a few problems. ''Inevitably, there have been accusations of 'bad registrations,' isolated instances that have been thoroughly investigated not only internally but by the appropriate legal authorities,'' the statement said.

Mike Hellon, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, said that Mr. Sproul had been considered ''very controversial'' in Arizona Republican circles before the recent allegations, partly because of past voter registration investigations. ''There are questions among a lot of people in the party about how he gets these contracts and why he gets contracts,'' Mr. Hellon said.

As a political operative in Arizona, Mr. Sproul is known for a no-holds-barred approach. He was criticized for dredging up 28-year-old domestic abuse claims against an incumbent State Senate candidate in 2008.

That same year, he promoted a ballot initiative that would have made it more difficult to impose additional taxes or increase spending in the state. The measure failed, despite considerable financial backing from the liquor industry and from Jim Click, a Tucson car dealer and a large Republican donor who has worked closely with Mr. Sproul on local elections.

On a campaign trip to Arizona last year, Mitt Romney visited one of Mr. Click's auto dealerships. Mr. Click is a co-chairman of Mr. Romney's campaign in Arizona. Mr. Sproul has also worked for the campaign, receiving about $60,000 since last year, according to campaign finance records. A spokesman for the campaign said that Mr. Sproul collected petition signatures during the Republican primary elections and provided office space.

Mr. Click said that while he had worked with Mr. Sproul on campaigns and thought highly of him, he had nothing to do with securing his recent contracts with the Republican National Committee. ''He's always performed for me,'' Mr. Click said. ''He's always been aboveboard.''

Mr. Sproul is one of the biggest players in a for-profit industry that relies on low-paid seasonal workers who must be quickly trained in the legalities of voter registration. In addition to $12 an hour, workers might be eligible for college internship credit, the ad said.

Mr. Sproul has said that his company employs 4,000 workers. ''We have in place a background check system and stringent quality controls meant to prevent individuals from skirting the system,'' said the statement released by his lawyer, David Leibowitz.

Mr. Sproul runs at least five affiliated companies that have conducted registration drives, polling and political consulting. According to a lawsuit filed against him by a former employee over pay, Mr. Sproul changed his company's name in 2008 to Lincoln Strategy Group, from Sproul & Associates, after the negative publicity.

More recently, Mr. Sproul has operated under the name Strategic Allied Consulting.

Susan Bucher, the superintendent of elections in Palm Beach County, Fla., said that about 100 questionable voter registrations had been flagged there. Of those, more than half involved changing a voter's party affiliation to Republican or independent. Ms. Bucher said that the revised registrations gave her ''the feeling that the person completing the application had not come in contact with the voter,'' because they failed to include proper identifying information, like the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number.

The voter registration fraud allegations against Mr. Sproul's companies seem to fit a pattern.

In Nevada, a complaint filed last month with the secretary of state's office alleged that a woman, Cathy Sue Yancey, was told to tear up a form in which she registered as a Democrat and fill out another one without marking her party affiliation.

The complaint was filed by another woman who said she witnessed the event outside an unemployment office in Henderson, Nev., on Sept. 13. That woman, Gina Greisen, said she and a group of friends had been approached by a man who told them that they needed to update their voter registration. ''He talked about voter fraud and mentioned Acorn and illegals voting,'' Ms. Greisen said.

The worker then approached Ms. Yancey. ''He was sure a Republican, because he was totally against Obama,'' said Ms. Yancey, who was reached by phone and verified Ms. Greisen's account. ''I'm a Democrat. I'm certainly voting for Obama.''

The election forms were traced to a Sproul operation. Similar allegations prompted an investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice in 2004.

In that case, a couple told the police in Roseburg that they had been approached by a woman outside a Walmart who asked them to register to vote. The husband, John Gomez, filled out a card registering as a Republican. His wife, Katheline, registered as a Democrat.

About a month later, Mr. Gomez received a ballot in the mail, but his wife did not, the Oregon authorities said. Her registration form seemed to have evaporated. Investigators determined that the woman who solicited the couple had been paid by Sproul & Associates.

The woman told investigators that she was paid only when she registered Republicans or those who said they would vote for President George W. Bush. The Oregon inquiry focused on more than 100 fraud complaints, many pointing to operations run by Mr. Sproul, but did not result in any charges. A lawyer for Mr. Sproul said at the time that the company had a system in place to prevent and detect fraud and forgery.

Additional investigations of Mr. Sproul's organization, including one by the Portland office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also failed to produce any charges.

Around the same time, officials at a library in Pittsburgh complained that Mr. Sproul's company had used false pretenses -- claiming to represent the nonpartisan America Votes -- to get permission to set up a voter registration desk outside their building. It was only after visitors began to complain that the library learned that the canvassers represented the Republican Party.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/us/politics/nathan-sproul-a-republican-operative-long-trailed-by-voter-fraud-claims.html


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The authorities in Florida are reviewing ''numerous'' complaints about voter registration efforts by a company run by Nathan Sproul, shown in 2004. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM HOOD/ASSOCIATED PRESS)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



621 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 5, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Presidential Debate Draws Over 70 Million Viewers


BYLINE: By BRIAN STELTER


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; MEDIA DECODER; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 520 words


The first of three presidential debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney reached more than 70 million viewers on Wednesday night.

Nielsen, a television measurement company, said 67.2 million viewers watched on television at home - the highest number for a first debate since 1980. That year, 80.6 million watched the only debate between President Jimmy Carter and the Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan.

A few second- and third-round presidential debates since then have attracted more than 67 million viewers, including the second debate of the 1992 cycle. Nonetheless, Wednesday's totals were surprisingly high by almost any standard.

About 52.4 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2008, according to Nielsen, though that debate was held on a Friday night, typically a lower-rated night of the week. About 62.5 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2004, which similarly featured an incumbent president and a challenger.

Nielsen's total for Wednesday's debate did not count people who watched outside the home (in offices, bars or airports) or who watched in other countries. Nor did not count any of the millions of people who had access to the debate on computers, tablets or phones. CNN.com, for instance, said it recorded 1.2 million live streams of its debate coverage around the world. YouTube, the Web video giant, said its partners had "millions of live-streamed views of the debates," but declined to release specific numbers.

Of the 11 traditional channels that televised the debate and subscribed to Nielsen ratings, ABC was the most-watched, with almost 11.3 million viewers during the commercial-free debate, Nielsen said. NBC and CBS were close behind, with 11.1 million for NBC and 10.6 million for CBS.

Fox News Channel was as big as any broadcaster, with about 10.4 million viewers during the debate (up from 8.2 million in 2008 and 9.6 million in 2004). The Fox broadcast network attracted about 6.9 million; CNN, 6 million; and MSNBC, 4.7 million. (Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all skew toward older viewers, but interestingly, CNN had a surge of 18- to 34-year-old viewers for the debate - nearly 1.5 million, versus 882,000 for Fox News and 772,000 for MSNBC.)

More than 2.6 million Spanish-language viewers watched on Univision, and another 248,000 watched on Telemundo, according to Nielsen. (Telemundo showed the debate on a tape delay.) The lowest-rated of all the channels with the face-off was Current TV, Al Gore's fledgling liberal cable channel, which had about 100,000 viewers.

Another measurement company, Rentrak, found that the total audience for the debate was remarkably stable from 9 to 10:30 p.m. The company, which tracks viewership behavior in one million homes, found a slight uptick at 10 p.m.

TiVo, which tracks the rewinding behavior of digital video recorder owners, found that the most-rewound moment of the debate came at 9:27, when Mr. Romney mentioned his plan to cut funding from PBS (and gave Big Bird a shout-out). About 250,000 viewers watched the debate on PBS.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/presidential-debate-drew-more-than-70-million-viewers/


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



622 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 5, 2012 Friday
The New York Times on the Web


Obama Team Tries to Change Course After Debate Disappoints


BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER and PETER BAKER


SECTION: Section ; Column 0; National Desk; Pg.


LENGTH: 1246 words


DENVER -- President Obama and his team woke up here on Thursday morning confronted by the realization that he lost his first debate by passively letting Mitt Romney control the conversation. Then the president and his advisers resolved to do what he himself did not the night before.

Under fire from fellow Democrats, Mr. Obama came out swinging, accusing Mr. Romney of lying to the American people about his plans for the nation. ''I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney,'' Mr. Obama told 12,000 supporters during a lakeside rally. ''But it couldn't be Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow onstage last night said he didn't know anything about that.''

He said the Mr. Romney of the debate wanted to put more teachers in classrooms and claimed not to know companies get tax breaks for outsourcing jobs. ''The man onstage last night, he does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney's decisions and what he's been saying for the last year,'' the president said. ''And that's because he knows full well that we don't want what he's been selling for the last year.''

The vigorous assault on Mr. Romney suggested just how worried Mr. Obama's campaign has become. The president's advisers concluded that he had lost his first debate by not pressing Mr. Romney enough. After a series of late-night and early-morning consultations, the Obama team decided to try to correct that Thursday with a more aggressive stance, including the rally rhetoric, a new television ad and a conference call questioning Mr. Romney's truthfulness.

David Axelrod, the president's strategist, called Mr. Romney an ''artful dodger'' whose debate comments were ''devoid of honesty,'' ''rooted in deception,'' ''untethered to the truth'' and ''well delivered but fraudulent.''

''Not surprisingly, what we learned is he'll say anything,'' Mr. Axelrod said. ''That makes him effective in the short term but vulnerable in the long term.'' He added, ''He may win the Oscar for his performance last night but he's not going to win the presidency.''

The Romney team, feeling rejuvenated, fired back. ''In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future,'' said Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman. ''Rather than a plan to fix our economy, President Obama simply offered more false attacks and renewed his call for job-killing tax hikes.''

In trying to turn the tables on Mr. Romney, the president's team was hoping to salvage a debate performance widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike. Aides described Mr. Obama as out of practice at debating and said he made a conscious decision not to bring up some of the campaign's favorite attack lines of recent months, a decision they left little doubt disappointed them.

Now they will have to make what Mr. Axelrod called ''adjustments'' in the president's approach for the next debate on Oct. 16. The ''take-away from this debate,'' he said, was that they ''can't allow someone to stand there and manhandle the truth.''

Mr. Obama's advisers appeared almost to expect a different Mitt Romney to turn up for the debate: the hard-edged conservative who had largely pitched his message to the Republican base. Instead, Mr. Romney softened his rhetoric, promising that his reform of Medicare would not touch benefits for older Americans and praising elements of Mr. Obama's education policy. He also tried to paint the president as a protector of big banks because of the post-financial-crisis government bailout of the banking industry.

Campaign officials said they wished Mr. Obama had called out Mr. Romney on assertions that they said were untrue, although they conceded that some of the weaknesses in the president's performance were simply part of his approach to debates, which is to shy away from highly personal confrontations. The base wants him ''to gut Romney,'' one adviser said, but swing voters hate that and the president was trying to find a balance.

Even so, Democrats questioned why he did not bring up a range of issues they considered favorable to Mr. Obama, including women's rights; Mr. Romney's taxes; the Republican candidate's comments about the ''47 percent'' of Americans who consider themselves ''victims'' dependent on the government; and the record of his former firm, Bain Capital. Some Colorado Democrats leaving the debate seemed despondent at the president's performance and fretted that he had put their state back in play.

''The president did well in terms of substance but I think there were opportunities to hold Governor Romney accountable that may have been missed,'' former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a close ally of the campaign, said in an interview. ''But you know, it's one debate. There are two more.''

Other Democrats picked up what they saw as Mr. Obama's missed opportunities, assailing Mr. Romney for misleading viewers about his tax plan and other issues. The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning organization, posted what it called ''27 myths'' told in 38 minutes.

A new television ad produced by the Obama campaign for seven swing states showed Mr. Romney denying aspects of his tax plan. ''If we can't trust him here, how could we ever trust him here?'' the ad asks as a picture of the Oval Office comes on screen. ''He was just lying,'' Mr. Strickland said. ''He was fast and loose with the truth.'' The Romney camp countered with the various ways they asserted Mr. Obama misled about the issues during the debate.

Appearing at his morning rally on Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed more energetic than he had the night before. Clad in khakis and a blue Windbreaker, he mocked Mr. Romney in a way he had not during his sober performance on Wednesday night. He singled out Mr. Romney's promise to cut funding for the Public Broadcasting System, including its signature children's character.

''Thank goodness someone is finally getting tough on Big Bird,'' he said. ''We didn't know Big Bird was driving the federal deficit.''

Someone in the crowd shouted, ''Elmo,'' referring to another children's character. ''Elmo too?'' Mr. Obama replied with a laugh.

Mr. Obama's advisers went into the debate recognizing that incumbents often lose their first debate while seeking re-election in part because they have less time to prepare and in part because it is the first time a challenger is onstage as a peer with a president. They also worried that the news media, anxious for a compelling story line, would be primed to write a Romney comeback story.

But what they did not count on was how universally the president would be criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for his performance. Instead of cementing a sense of inevitability borne out of solid swing-state polls in recent weeks, Mr. Obama has now let Mr. Romney off the mat and given him momentum.

Whether it changes the fundamental dynamics of the campaign remains to be seen. Mr. Obama has outgunned Mr. Romney in advertising in critical states and it is too early to know if the polls will change in a sustained way. The next big moment on the campaign schedule is next week's debate between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney's running mate.

But with 33 days left, the president now finds himself entering the final month of the campaign trying to get off the defensive and regain his footing.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/us/politics/obama-team-tries-to-change-course-after-debate-disappoints.html


LOAD-DATE: October 6, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



623 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Lede)


October 5, 2012 Friday


Romney's Threat to Big Bird Sows Confusion Abroad, and Feeds It at Home


BYLINE: ROBERT MACKEY


LENGTH: 1086 words



HIGHLIGHT: After Mitt Romney appeared to suggest that the beloved "Sesame Street" character Big Bird was surplus to requirements in Wednesday's debate, viewers around the world wondered how targeting a popular children's character could be a vote-winner.


Video from Le Monde of Mitt Romney's promise to cut the federal subsidy for public broadcasting during Wednesday's debate.

Mitt Romney's promise, during Wednesday debate, to cut into America's debt by ending the federal subsidy for public broadcasting generated an Internet backlash, and at least one popular new Twitter account, largely because the former management consultant appeared to suggest that the beloved "Sesame Street" character Big Bird was surplus to requirements.

Mitt Romney favors Wall Street over Sesame Street

- Fired Big Bird (@FiredBigBird)4 Oct 12

Mr. Romney's decision to run against Big Bird gladdened American conservatives, who have long complained of a liberal bias on public television and radio channels, but puzzled many viewers abroad, where local versions of the educational program are popular and well respected. In France, Le Monde reported that the slight against le Gros Oiseau threatened to spiral into "l'affaire Big Bird," after President Obama -- experiencing a certain esprit d'escalier -- came up, a day late, with the retort: "Thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It's about time. We didn't know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit."

The German magazine Der Spiegel explained to readers that Mr. Romney's threat to the character that viewers of "Sesamstrasse" know as Bibo generated a Twitter-Sturm during the debate that reached maximum intensity in just 20 minutes.

A sad day for Bibo, the German version of Big Bird.

In a useful roundup of the comic images of an unemployed Big Bird circulating on social networks, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported, somewhat inaccurately, that Mr. Romney had tried to soften the blow by first telling viewers, "I love Garibaldo," which is the name the character goes by in "Vila Sésamo."

Garibaldo, star of the funkier Brazilian version of "Sesame Street."

At least some of the confusion among viewers watching the debate from outside the United States centered on the question of how Mr. Romney expected to get votes by pledging to eliminate state support for televised educational programming, and news, which is taken for granted in much of the developed world.

As Joshua Keating explained in a post for Foreign Policy, scholars at New York University reported last year that Americans spend far less per capita on public broadcasting than a representative sample of 13 other nations, including France, Britain, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada.

Even factoring in money provided by states and local governments, Americans pay less than $4 a year for the television and radio programming they get from PBS and NPR. Canadians and Australians pay about 8 times more per capita, the French and Japanese 14 times more, Britons 24 times more and Germans 41 times more.

In a statement decrying Mr. Romney's comments, PBS noted, "The federal investment in public broadcasting," about $500 million a year, "equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget."

You should read the statement released by our bosses at PBS! http://t.co/oD8Ek5lP

- FiredBert (@FiredBert)5 Oct 12

In the context of the debate, though, what is probably more important than the fact that Americans actually pay a relatively small amount of money for public broadcasting is evidence that they are convinced that they are paying a lot more.

As Politico reported, "Most Americans think public broadcasting receives a much larger share of the federal budget than it actually does," according to a poll conducted for CNN last year. The results of that survey, which asked respondents to estimate what share of the federal budget was spent on certain programs, found that just 27 percent of Americans knew that the money for PBS and NPR was less than 1 percent of government spending. Remarkably, 40 percent guessed that the share was between 1 and 5 percent and 30 percent said it was in excess of 5 percent -- including 7 percent who said that more than half of the federal budget was spent on television and radio broadcasts.

Asked if the spending on PBS and NPR should change, 53 percent called for it to be increased or stay the same, while just 16 percent said it should be eliminated entirely.

It might seem strange for anyone who knows that the federal government spends so little on PBS to begin a discussion of necessary cuts there, but perhaps Mr. Romney has calculated that the undecided voters he is chasing might be among the three-quarters of the American population that thinks the subsidy is far larger than it is.

A spokeswoman for PBS, Anne Bentley, told USA Today that the Congressional subsidy does not go to PBS or NPR, but to local stations around the United States that pay fees in exchange for broadcast rights to their programs, which are produced with donations and revenue from other sources. Ms. Bentley added that Congressional support accounts for up to 50 percent of the operating budgets for some local stations in rural areas. "They're really in jeopardy of going dark if they don't receive funding," Ms. Bentley said.

Big Bird: My bed time is usually 7:45, but I was really tired yesterday and fell asleep at 7! Did I miss anything last night?

- Sesame Street (@sesamestreet)4 Oct 12

The producers of "Sesame Street" offered a comic tweet in the voice of Big Bird the morning after the debate, and a statement explaining that while they are "a nonpartisan, nonprofit, educational organization," they are also "dependent on PBS to distribute our commercial-free educational programming to all children in the United States."

Without support from the public, educational programming would be interrupted by commercials and need to take the concerns of advertisers for higher ratings into account.

As Alyssa Rosenberg noted on the liberal Web site Think Progress, Mr. Romney has been talking about Big Bird on the campaign trail. In an exchange with a voter concerned about the federal debt caught on camera by CNN in Iowa last December, he said: "I'm going to say PBS is going to have to have advertisement. We're not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird's going to have advertisements."

It's only been two days and I can't remember a single specific thing about the Presidential debate besides Big Bird.

- Marc Lynch (@abuaardvark)5 Oct 12



LOAD-DATE: November 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



624 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 5, 2012 Friday


Romney Takes Liberties With Claims About a Bipartisan Past


BYLINE: MICHAEL WINES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 989 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's signature achievements as Massachusetts governor were nevertheless marked by tensions with lawmakers.


When Mitt Romney accused President Obama in their debate Wednesday night of refusing to work with Republicans, he held up his own record as the Massachusetts governor as an example of what political cooperation can achieve.

As a Republican governor whose legislature was 87 percent Democrats, he said, "I figured out from Day 1 I had to get along, and I had to work across the aisle to get anything done." The result, he said, was that "we drove our schools to be No. 1 in the nation. We cut taxes 19 times."

Mr. Romney and the legislature did at times get along, Massachusetts schools were often top-rated, and some taxes did drop during Mr. Romney's four years as governor, from 2003 through 2006. But a comparison of his claims to the factual record suggests that all three take liberties with the truth.

While the governor and the legislature came together to produce balanced budgets and enact a signature health care reform bill, much of those four years were characterized by conflict and tensions. In the opening months of his tenure, Mr. Romney vetoed a Massachusetts House plan to create new committees and raise staff members' pay, and the legislators rejected his flagship proposal, a nearly 600-page plan to overhaul the state bureaucracy.

Mr. Romney proved to have a taste for vetoes, killing legislative initiatives in his first two years at more than twice the rate of his more popular Republican predecessor, William F. Weld, The Boston Globe reported in 2004. The lawmakers responded in kind by overriding his vetoes at a rapid pace.

By 2004, the second year of his term, Mr. Romney was provoked enough to mount an unprecedented campaign to unseat Democratic legislators, spending $3 million in Republican party money and hiring a nationally known political strategist, Michael Murphy.

The effort failed spectacularly. Republicans lost seats, leaving them with their smallest legislative delegation since 1867. Democratic legislators were reported at the time to have been deeply angered by the campaign's tactics.

"They had a deteriorating relationship during the first two years," Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor and expert on state politics at Tufts University, said in an interview. The campaign "was designed to demonstrate that he could make life difficult for them if he chose to do so. It did not endear him to them."

Mr. Romney quickly initiated a charm offensive, inviting Democratic leaders to dinners at his home for the first time since taking office two years earlier. But the legislators were soon "infuriated," Mr. Berry said, when Mr. Romney, testing the presidential waters, began traveling outside the state and casting brickbats at Massachusetts's traditionally liberal values before crowds of potential supporters.

On education, Mr. Romney was factually correct in stating that Massachusetts students were ranked first in the nation during his tenure. Massachusetts students in grades four and eight took top honors or tied for first in reading and mathematics on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal Department of Education test often called the nation's report card.

However, educators largely agree that the state's rise to first place was a result of a wholesale reform of state schools enacted 10 years earlier under Governor Weld. The reforms, carried out over eight years, doubled state spending on schools and brought standards and accountability to both administrators and students.

"Governor Romney does not get to take the credit for achieving that No. 1 ranking," said Mike Gilbert, the field director for the nonprofit Massachusetts Association of School Committees, "but it did happen while he was in office."

Under Mr. Romney, neither the governor nor the legislature enjoyed notable successes in education, although Mr. Romney is credited with battling successfully against efforts to dismantle some of the 1993 reforms.

Mr. Romney and the legislature cut deeply into state grants to local governments in 2003 amid a state budget crisis, forcing many school districts to raise property taxes. In 2006, Mr Romney vetoed a bill passed unanimously by the legislature that established standards for preschool education and set long-term plans to make it universal. He said the programs would cost too much at a time of budget austerity.

Mr. Romney's claim that he was responsible for 19 separate tax cuts is also technically accurate. But here, too, the complete story paints a very different picture.

Perhaps the most substantial tax reduction occurred in 2005, when Mr. Romney's administration wrote legislation refunding $250 million in capital gains taxes to 145,000 investors. But the legislation carried out a court ruling finding that the taxes had been illegally withheld in 2002; the court gave the state the option of refunding the taxes or rewriting the law to correct the illegality.

Mr Romney proposed the latter, and the legislature agreed.

Of the remaining 18 tax cuts, many were proposed by the legislature, not Mr. Romney, and others were routine extensions of existing tax reductions that were due to expire. One was a change in the Massachusetts tax code to make it conform to changes in the federal code. Two were one-day sales-tax holidays.

Mr. Romney's critics note that his administration was also responsible for revenue-raising measures which, under that loose definition, might well be called tax increases. In his first year, Mr. Romney closed business tax loopholes and increased fees on an array of services, from marriage licenses to home purchases.

"Our numbers on revenue are that he raised about $750 million annually -- $375 million from fees and $375 million from corporate taxes," said Michael Widmer, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

In 2004, Mr. Romney signed legislation allowing local officials to collect an additional $100 million in commercial property taxes from businesses.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



625 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


October 5, 2012 Friday


Oct. 5: Day After Debate, Strong Swing State Polls for Romney


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1122 words



HIGHLIGHT: On Friday, Mitt Romney had his best day in state-level polling since at least the party conventions, something that very probably reflects improvement in his standing following the debate on Wednesday.


On Friday, Mitt Romney had his best day in state-level polling since at least the party conventions, something that very probably reflects improvement in his standing following the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday.

Two automated polling firms, Rasmussen Reports and We Ask America, released polls in Ohio, Florida and Virginia on Friday. All of these polls were conducted on Thursday, the day after the Denver debate.

In the Rasmussen Reports polls, Mr. Romney trailed President Obama by 1 point in Ohio. But he led him by 1 point in Virginia and by 2 points in Florida.

These are very good numbers for Mr. Romney as compared with the ones we were seeing recently, although part of that is because Rasmussen has shown more favorable numbers for him in these states throughout the year. As compared with Rasmussen Reports' previous polls of the same states, the margin in Ohio held steady, but Mr. Romney gained 2 points in Virginia and 4 in Florida, for an average gain of 2 points among the three states.

The We Ask America polls suggested that Mr. Romney made much larger gains. He led in all three states in its polls -- and gained an average of 7 points from We Ask America's prior polling of the same states.

Mr. Romney's bounce has been less apparent in national tracking polls so far. The Rasmussen Reports national tracking poll held steady, showing a 2-point lead for Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama actually gained 1 point in the Gallup national tracking poll, however, and about 1.5 percentage points in the online tracking poll conducted by the RAND Corporation.

Another online tracking poll, from Ipsos, suggested a strong trend for Mr. Romney, however.

The Ipsos polls are confusing because Ipsos has released polls covering various time intervals in the past few days, but they tell a potentially interesting story if you work through them carefully.

In a poll of about 500 voters that Ipsos conducted immediately after the debate, late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, Mr. Obama still led by 5 points. However, Mr. Obama's lead was just 2 points in a poll Ipsos released Friday, which included interviews from Monday night (before the debate) through Friday morning.

The inference I make from these Ipsos polls is that Mr. Romney must have polled very well in the most recent interviews it conducted, late Thursday and early Friday morning, quite possibly leading Mr. Obama, in order to have made up so much ground.

It may have been that Mr. Obama's problems were growing worse throughout the day on Thursday as criticism of his debate performance was amplified. That would also help to explain Mr. Romney's very strong performance in the We Ask America polls on Thursday.

Of course, the Rasmussen Reports polls were also conducted on Thursday, and Mr. Romney made more modest gains there. It is harder to make inferences from the RAND Corporation and Gallup tracking polls, because they use lengthy seven-day field periods and conducted only one full day of interviewing after the debates. But the fact that Mr. Romney actually lost ground in those polls is not very consistent with the 7-point bounce that the We Ask America polls imply, even considering that most of its data was predebate.

Polling trends can sometimes be odd in reaction to news events. One factor is that supporters of a particular candidate may be more enthusiastic, and more inclined to respond to surveys, after he gets a favorable development in the news cycle. The methodology that a pollster applies, particularly its likely voter model, may amplify or mitigate these effects.

The We Ask America polls, for instance, had a lot of voters who identified as Republican in their samples. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that -- I'd rather that pollsters give the most honest snapshot of what they were finding in the field on the day that they conducted their interviews. Part of the reason that critiques about "oversampling" Democrats or Republicans are misguided is because the party identification breakouts themselves provide interesting information. It's logical to conclude, for instance, that Republicans may have been especially likely to respond to pollsters after Mr. Romney's strong debate performance. That would also explain why Mr. Romney's bounce was more modest in the Rasmussen Reports polls, as they weight their samples by party identification (a poor methodological choice, in my view), which may dampen the enthusiasm effect.

There is another type of polling bias, however, which is potentially more relevant when there is polling after a major development in the news cycle. Namely, polls are very probably biased toward high-information voters who take more interest in the news and are more likely to respond to political surveys. This issue may be more profound in automated polls, which have especially low response rates -- often only 3 or 4 percent of the people they call respond to them.

So it's hard to distinguish a genuine shift toward Mr. Romney, from a real but potentially temporary shift based on changes in voter enthusiasm, from an artificial change caused by a bias toward heavy news consumers.

But now there's another complication: the government reported a strong jobs report on Friday, which changed the tone of the news cycle. To the extent that the polls reflected people's reaction to the news coverage of the debate as much as the debate itself, the jobs report could blunt some of Mr. Romney's momentum if the tenor of news coverage changes.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast did show a clear shift toward Mr. Romney on Friday, giving him a 15.1 percent chance of winning the Electoral College -- up from 12.9 percent on Thursday.

My subjective view is that, despite the somewhat mixed messages that the polls gave about the magnitude of Mr. Romney's bounce, this is still too conservative. The forecast model is pretty "smart" about distinguishing random movements in the polls from real ones, and so can be fairly conservative in interpreting the data. However, it does not have the advantage of knowing that the shifts may have come for a good reason -- in this case, Mr. Romney's strong performance in the debate.

So I would bet on Mr. Romney right now given the odds the model offers -- but I'd have done so more confidently before the morning's jobs report.

It's going to take a few more days for the forecast model to catch up to the news, and I don't think there's any alternative but to keep an open mind about the polls for right now.



LOAD-DATE: October 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



626 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 5, 2012 Friday 9:06 PM EST


Why Linda McMahon has a fighting chance in Connecticut


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 921 words


Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon has a shot at a very unlikely proposition: winning a Senate race in a blue state in a presidential year, after voters rejected her there two years ago in the midst of a GOP wave. 

So how did McMahon get to the point at which polls show a close race with Rep. Chris Murphy (D)? A confluence of factors, including increased support from women, a flawed opponent and, until recently, a dearth of paid media attacks against her. To be clear, Connecticut's Democratic lean and President Obama's expected double-digit victory there suggest the fundamentals still favor Murphy. But McMahon is hanging around. It's worth looking at why.

Let's start at the beginning - which in this case is 2010.

McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment lost to then-state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) by 12 points. She spent a whopping $50 million, but it wasn't enough to defeat the popular and well-known Democrat and overcome the negative image Democrats stoked about McMahon's association with professional wrestling.

McMahon decided to make a second try for the Senate this cycle. She didn't embark on her new campaign without heeding lessons from the old one. Her performance among women, who account for about half the electorate, was abysmal in 2010. She won less than four-in-ten women (37 percent), according to exit polling data. Now, she claims the support of 44 percent of women, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday that shows McMahon running even with Murphy.

McMahon's involvement in professional wrestling contributed to the negative attitude women had toward her in 2010. This time around, she's sought to soften her image and open up a dialogue with women across the state.

In 2011, she launched a statewide tour recognizing women in business. She's made biweekly coffee sessions in the homes of women a regular part of her schedule. She's also tapped her immense wealth to try to make her case over the airwaves and blunt Democratic attacks.

"There has been a huge shift and reorientation in the campaign focused on women," McMahon strategist Chris LaCivita told The Fix.

Murphy recently released a scathing TV ad that said McMahon "demeaned women to make millions in her business." McMahon promptly responded with her own commercial  in which she declared: "Murphy calls me anti-women. But Chris, take a look. I am a woman. A pro-choice woman."

Another difference between 2012 and 2010 is the Democratic nominee. Unlike Blumenthal, Murphy is not a well-known attorney general who had served in that post for almost 20 years. He's only served in the House since 2007 and isn't very well-known outside his district.

That's made it easier for McMahon to define Murphy. A recent string of negative headlines about facing foreclosure and his failure to pay rent didn't help the Democrat. McMahon pounced with a negative ad.

But McMahon has had to contend with personal image issues of her own. She was late with property taxes and a local paper gave a decades-old bankruptcy renewed attention last month when it reported new details. Meanwhile, most Connecticut voters have negative opinion of professional wrestling, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

Murphy spokesman Eli Zupnick told The Fix he believes voters have turned away from the stories about Murphy's personal finances the past couple of weeks because attacks against them have "exposed [McMahon's] own hypocrisy."

Democratic strategists have zeroed in on a couple of attacks against McMahon, involving entitlements and her support for the so-called Blunt Amendment, a failed congressional measure that would have allowed employers to opt out of covering contraceptive services. On Friday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a new ad hitting McMahon over her comment about "sunset provisions" in a discussion about Social Security.

The DSCC has spent over $1.2 million on advertising so far, while Republican groups have not entered the fray. And why would they? McMahon's wealth means she doesn't need the financial reinforcement other Republicans in close Senate races do.

According to her campaign finance report, McMahon had spent about $12 million though late July. Murphy announced Friday that he raised $3 million during the third quarter, a solid number, but not one that will bring him to financial parity with the Republican. McMahon hasn't yet released her third quarter number. 

Democrats chalk up McMahon's success this cycle to a long period in which she never faced heavy paid media attacks. Now that they have stepped up their offensive game, they believe it will take its toll. With both sides launching barbs, the Quinnipiac poll shows that unfavorable opinions of both Murphy and McMahon have been on the rise since late August. Ultimately, this race could come down to which side's negative hits gain more traction.

Looking at the Senate map, a Republican victory in Connecticut would be welcome news for the party, which has seen its chances in the once-promising pickup opportunity in Missouri race slip from its grasp when embattled Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) refused to end his campaign amid controversial comments.

Ultimately, McMahon may have to outrun Mitt Romney in Connecticut by 15 points. And as Democrats continue to attack her, her image will sustain hits it can hardly afford. In other words, McMahon may well be 0-2 in Senate races on Nov. 7. But it won't be because she went down without a fight when many others had written off her chances.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



627 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Taking a close look at the 'independent' study that Romney's ad touts


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A06


LENGTH: 923 words


"Who will raise taxes on the middle class? According to an independent, nonpartisan study, Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000. The same organization says the plan from Mitt Romney and common-sense conservatives is not a tax hike on the middle class."

- Voiceover from a new 

Mitt Romney campaign ad

Dueling studies!

Politicians love nothing more than to point to an "independent" study that backs up their political position. Thus, in the first presidential debate, President Obama could claim that GOP rival Mitt Romney has a plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion, with tax breaks for the wealthy and tax hikes for the middle class. And Romney could adamantly deny that, citing six studies of his own.

There is usually less to such studies than the claims they are said to support. Let's explore how such studies are used in a new advertisement the Romney campaign released just hours after the debate ended.

The Facts

The "independent, nonpartisan" organization cited by the Romney campaign is the American Enterprise Institute, which bills itself as "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise." A who's who of Republican heavyweights - such as Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Thiessen, Danielle Pletka, John Yoo and John Bolton - is affiliated with it, but in order to maintain its tax status as a 501(c)3 organization, it cannot proclaim any political affiliation.

AEI is one of the top think tanks in Washington; its scholars are respected and ideologically varied. But most people would regard it as right-leaning.

The Romney campaign probably wants to tag AEI as nonpartisan because the group that produced the study that Obama cited, the Tax Policy Center, often is described as nonpartisan. The Tax Policy Center is affiliated with the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution - and Brookings is frequently seen as a left counterpart to AEI. Never mind that the Romney campaign once referred to a Tax Policy Center study as an "objective, third-party analysis."

The first study mentioned in the Romney ad - supposedly showing "Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000"- is actually a very dry report titled "A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation." The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obama's budget. (Current law refers to policies that are supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts expire.)

Among the three scenarios, there's actually not much difference - for households making $100,000 to $200,000, the burden would be $2,800 to $5,400 a year through 2022 - and the administration's budget falls right in the middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad claims, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.

Presumably, a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided detailed plans. "We aren't really able to run the overall numbers for Romney because we were trying to use the plans for which we had good budget projections," said Matthew Jensen, one of the co-authors.

Indeed, the study also looks at how the distributional burden rose under George W. Bush - and he of course cut taxes, repeatedly. So just because the debt burden rises, that is not proof that a president will raise taxes.

"The ad correctly states what was outlined in the American Enterprise Institute's study," a Romney spokesman said.

The second study mentioned in the ad is an article for AEI's online magazine, titled "The Romney Tax Plan: Not a Tax Hike on the Middle Class." Alex Brill, the author, said he was motivated to write it because "all the ads the Democrats are running are false" in claiming that Romney plans to raise taxes on the middle class. In the article, Brill attempts to discredit the Tax Policy Center study.

The difficulty is that there is no fully detailed Romney plan that explains how he would reconcile his twin goals of reducing tax rates across the board and then closing enough loopholes to make it revenue-neutral. The Tax Policy Center concluded it could not be done without raising taxes on the middle class or boosting the deficit - hence the Democratic ads - but the head of the Tax Policy Center cautioned: "I don't interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives."

Romney has been inconsistent in describing his tax plan. In this week's debate, he declared, "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." But in the GOP Arizona debate in February, he said, "We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent."

The Pinocchio Test

The Romney campaign clearly wants to counter Obama ads that misleadingly suggest he plans to raises taxes on the middle class. But the campaign really pushes the envelope in asserting that the AEI study shows that Obama "will raise taxes on the middle class." That's not what the study says - by a long shot.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



628 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 99 words


A Romney ad, and the real numbers behind it

A Romney ad released just hours after Wednesday's debate says a study found that President Obama would raise middle-class taxes. Did it?

The Fact Checker, A6

Was the debate Romney the real Romney?

The Republican's challenge is to convince voters that the steady, decisive, in-command competitor seen in the first presidential debate is the real him. A4

A tale of four candidates

Dan Balz says there's no comparing the two men on the debate stage and the two on the trail. The Take,A4 


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



629 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Romney takes newly aggressive stance on his tax plan


BYLINE: Lori Montgomery;Peyton M. Craighill


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1016 words


With his forceful denial of charges that he would raise taxes on the middle class, Mitt Romney used Wednesday's debate to launch an aggressive new effort to regain his footing in the battle over taxes.

In one of the debate's first exchanges, the Republican presidential nominee directly challenged President Obama's assertion that Romney's tax plan would finance big new breaks for the wealthy by wiping out popular deductions for those who earn less than $250,000 a year.

"I know that you and your running mate keep saying that. I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case," Romney said onstage in Denver. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And . . . I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families."

Hours later, Romney released a new TV ad arguing that Obama, not Romney, is the bigger threat to middle-class pocketbooks - the second this week. Neither spot offers new information about how Romney would pay for his tax plan, which is heavy on promises but light on details. Instead, the ads seek to shift the conversation to more comfortable territory for Republicans: Which candidate is more likely to raise taxes?

Vice President Biden appeared to play into Romney's hands on that front Thursday, acknowledging that he and Obama want to let taxes rise by $1 trillion for the nation's wealthiest households over the next decade.

"Yes, we do," Biden said at an event in Iowa. ''On top of the trillions of dollars in spending that we have already cut, we're going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks. Come on, man. . . . That's not a tax raise. That's called fairness where I come from."

The pushback from Romney comes as Republicans are widely concerned that he is doing a poor job of defending his tax plan, the centerpiece of his agenda for sparking economic growth and creating jobs. Public opinion polls have shown that Obama has held a consistent advantage on the question of which candidate voters trust more to handle taxes. A Washington Post poll last month in the critical swing state of Ohio found Obama ahead on the tax question by 17 percentage points.

Asked about the polls on Thursday, Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie said, "The Obama campaign has spent a ton of money trying to convince voters that Governor Romney would raise taxes on the middle class."

Gillespie said Romney is fighting back now - fully two months after Obama first launched his attack - to take advantage of the national exposure of the debate.

"We want to weigh in heavily with ads on the subject after 60 million people had a chance to hear him set the record straight," Gillespie said.

Romney's sharp performance cheered conservatives, who worried that Obama's edge on the tax issue could do lasting damage to the cause of tax revision, which has been gaining momentum in both parties.

"He made the point that this is a pro-growth tax cut," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "I would have preferred this to be the conversation for the last six months. But I'll take that it's the issue for the last month of the campaign."

Romney's plan calls for cutting income tax rates by 20 percent for people at all income levels, repealing the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, and wiping out capital gains taxes for middle-class families.

Those cuts would drain nearly $5 trillion out of the Treasury over the next decade, according to budget analysts. Romney has vowed to replace the lost revenue by scaling back "loopholes and deductions," but he has declined to say which ones.

That lack of detail created a political opening for Obama, who in August latched on to a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that declared Romney's goals for tax revisions "not mathematically possible."

The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, found that Romney's rate cuts would reduce tax collections from individuals by $360 billion in 2015. To avoid increasing deficits, it said, the plan would have to generate an equal sum by cutting tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, medical expenses and child care - all breaks that benefit the middle class.

Even if Americans in the upper tax brackets were targeted first, the study found, "there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion [a year] from those making over $200,000 to those making less" than that. As a result, millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, on average, while 95 percent of the population's taxes would rise about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.

In television ads and on the campaign trail, Obama has cited the study relentlessly, with little response from Romney until this week. "Amid this barrage, Mr. Romney has . . . played dumb, as in silent," the Wall Street Journal editorial page said on the morning of the debate.

Worried academics and think-tank fellows came to Romney's defense, arguing that Romney could pay for his tax cuts in any number of ways without harming the middle class. He could end the exemption for interest earned on state and local bonds, for example, or tax the buildup of value inside life insurance policies.

In the meantime, the Romney campaign is citing a study from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to accuse Obama of a secret plot to tax the middle class more. The ad unveiled on Thursday claims that, in order to make payments on the national debt over the next decade, "Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000."

Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement that the ad "gets an F in honesty" and "has nothing to do with the president's proposals."

Romney's newly aggressive stance appears to be helping his cause, at least initially. A CBS News instant survey of uncommitted voters found that they favored Obama by a significant margin on the tax issue going into Wednesday's debate. Immediately afterward, the numbers flipped.

montgomeryl@washpost.com

craighillp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



630 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


One deliciously dark tale


BYLINE: Michael O'Sullivan


SECTION: ; Pg. T32


LENGTH: 617 words


During the next month, Americans will be called upon to make a choice between two very distinct visions. No, not Obama vs. Romney. I'm talking about "Frankenweenie" vs. "Hotel Transylvania."

The two animated, monster-movie-themed releases - both timed to coincide with the pre-Halloween season - are almost polar opposites. Opening last week to mostly negative reviews, "Hotel Transylvania" is aimed squarely at the very youngest viewers, with tired jokes about flatulence and an insipid lead performance by Adam Sandler as Count Dracula.

"Frankenweenie," on the other hand, arrives this weekend with a very different pedigree, and a jolt of jangly energy. The story of a young science nerd who brings his dead dog back to life with a blast from a lightning bolt, "Frankenweenie" is an expansive new adaptation by Tim Burton of his 1984 live-action short of the same name. Designed to appeal to both discriminating adults and older kids, the gorgeous, black-and-white stop-motion film is a fresh, clever and affectionate love letter to classic horror movies.

Warning: It is decidedly not for little children. Like Burton's 1984 short, which famously got the filmmaker fired from Disney for being too intense for tots, "Frankenweenie" is a deliciously dark tale. At least one youngster could be heard loudly whimpering during a recent screening, begging to be taken home. The grown-ups in the audience, however, seemed to love it.

Transplanting Mary Shelley's 19th-century story to the 1950s, "Frankenweenie" is the story of 10-year-old Victor Frankenstein (voice of Charlie Tahan), a bookish loner whose best friend is his dog, Sparky. After Sparky is hit by a car, a desperate, distraught Victor applies some half-remembered lessons in electricity from his slightly unhinged science teacher (Martin Landau) and reanimates the pet pooch, one dark and stormy night.

All is well until some of Victor's classmates get wind of the secret experiment and begin resurrecting all of their dearly departed pets, too, including a hamster and some Sea-Monkeys. (It helps if you're old enough to know what "Sea-Monkeys" - a.k.a. brine shrimp - even are. "Just add water," read the old ad, which used to run in the back of comic books.) That they turn into something resembling the evil beasties from "Gremlins" is only one of several loving homages to the cinematic world of creature features. One Japanese-American kid, Toshiaki (James Hiroyuki Liao) unleashes a Godzilla-like monster when his late pet turtle - mischievously named Shelley - turns into a giant, rampaging reptile.

It's great fun.

So is the overall look of the film, which portrays Victor and everyone else in it as pallid, sunken-eyed (though lovable) ghouls. The boy who first discovers Victor's secret is a hunchbacked kid named Edgar - more familiarly known as "E" - Gore (Atticus Shaffer). You have to say it out loud to get the pun.

Screenwriter John August, who worked with Burton on "Dark Shadows" and other films, fills "Frankenweenie" with lots of equally wonderful, if silly, in-jokes.

Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short vividly portray Victor's parents, along with a variety of other characters. And as Victor's next-door neighbor Elsa Van Helsing, Winona Ryder seems to be channeling her sardonic character from Burton's 1988 hit "Beetlejuice." It's a knowing nod to a great performance, rather than a retread.

The choice here is clear. Leave "Hotel Transylvania," and its soulless, Saturday-morning computer animation, to the wee ones. But for a touch of Saturday night sophistication, you can't do better than "Frankenweenie."

osullivanm@washpost.com

PG. At area theaters. Contains some scary images and morbid thematic material. 87 minutes.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



631 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Romney gets his way against a listless Obama


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 902 words


Okay, who thinks President Obama should have taken his wife out for their anniversary instead of debating Mitt Romney?

With or without the sound on, Romney dominated the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night. He came off as ready, reasonable and, crucially, not even a little bit of a doofus.

The president, on the other hand, looked like he would rather have been anywhere else and, perhaps in an effort to avoid one of those "You're likable enough, Hillary" outbreaks of flaming smarty-pants-itis, let his rival get away with a lot: He was even unaggressive in challenging that tried-and-untrue talking point about how Obama has raided Medicare to pay for "Obamacare." And the same goes for Romney's out-of-nowhere assertion that he wants to keep parts of Dodd-Frank and lower the boom on Wall Street.

While Romney earned an A for affect, Obama looked down, looked away and sometimes even nodded encouragingly as Romney finally kicked off his general election campaign, suddenly presenting himself as a uniter and friend of the working stiff.

But worst in my book was the president's weak mewl of a closing statement: "You know, four years ago, I said that I'm not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president. And that's probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I've kept. But I also promised that I'd fight every single day on behalf of the American people. . . . I've kept that promise, and if you'll vote for me, then I promise I'll fight just as hard in a second term."

The unenergetic way he said that he'd fight communicated just the opposite and reminded me of how sometimes my kids sound, telling me they'll try to accomplish whatever chore I have in store. When they put it that way, I am well and truly warned that they have little to no intention of actually following through. And the president's general lack of get-up-and-go played right into the Republican argument that he's a well-intentioned sort who hasn't gotten it done - and, despite his best efforts, won't.

When Obama argued that the Romney tax plan doesn't add up and isn't equitable, the governor called him a fibber in the sunniest possible way: "I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case. Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it."

Obama, on the other hand, seemed at a loss about how to bat down whoppers without being disagreeable. When he did lash out, it was at poor Jim Lehrer, who had just told him his two minutes were up: "I had five seconds before you interrupted me." Boo-hoo, but that's not on the list of things presidents get to cry over.

The moderator so let Romney control the debate that if elected, the Republican might want to rethink his plan to defund Big Bird's network. Why, in a campaign in which there's been such a lack of specificity, the longtime PBS anchor lobbed a big-picture question about the role of government near the debate's end was a stumper. And he even broke one of Julia Child's cardinal rules for cooking and life - "You should never apologize at the table. People will think, 'Yes, it's really not so good' " - when he said that, with time too rapidly running out, "I'm not going to . . . say your answers have been too long or I've done a poor job."

One Republican who may not have loved every moment of Romney's performance is Indiana Senate candidate and tea party favorite Richard Mourdock, whose Democratic rival, Joe Donnelly, has been running a series of hilarious and highly effective ads against what he calls Mourdock's "my way or the highway" approach to working across the aisle. Romney likely earned a cameo in a future Donnelly ad when he said, "My experience as a governor is if I come in and lay down a piece of legislation and say, 'It's my way or the highway,' I don't get a lot done."

The "zingers" Team Romney promised did not really materialize, unless you count this one: "Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts." Nor, alas, did the president answer Romney's assertion that "the place you put your money just makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is" with a reference to Romney's accounts in the Caymans.

Perhaps the boldest moment of the night came when Romney cast himself as eager to crack down on the financial sector. At every campaign stop, he rails against regulation in general and Dodd-Frank in particular. In Denver, however, he sounded like a different man: "We're not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world."

So will conservatives be inflamed by this unrecognizably moderate rhetoric? On the contrary; this once, they surely agree with Nancy Pelosi's bottom-line advice to Democratic House candidates: "Just win, baby."

The overall impression was that these two men are not as far apart as advertised, but only one had had his energy drink, and the other was hoping not to spend his next wedding anniversary in front of millions of people.

Henneberger is a Washington Post political writer and anchors the paper's "She the People" blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



632 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


A tale of four candidates


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1548 words


DENVER - Wednesday's presidential debate was a tale of four candidates: the two men who stood onstage for 90 minutes and the two rivals Americans have seen for months on the campaign trail and in television commercials. There was no comparison.

Start with President Obama, who may have lost the exchange in as lopsided a manner as any incumbent in recent times. Others have stumbled in the first debates of their reelection campaigns. Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George W. Bush in 2004 come to mind. Both had bad moments that cost them their debates.

Obama didn't lose because he had a few bad moments. Challenger Mitt Romney dictated the tone and the tempo of the evening, at times acting as candidate and moderator. The president fell behind in the opening minutes and never really found his footing. He lacked energy stylistically and he lacked crispness substantively. He sounded like he does in his news conferences: at times discursive and often giving answers that were longer than necessary.

This wasn't the Obama seen in his campaign commercials or in the daily scrum with Romney's operation. His team has waged an extraordinarily aggressive effort from the moment Romney wrapped up the Republican nomination.

Given his vulnerability over the state of the economy, Obama and his advisers sought to define Romney before Romney could define himself. It seemed to work. The campaign attacked the Republican for his work at Bain Capital, for not immediately releasing his tax returns, for putting money in a Swiss bank account and in the Cayman Islands.

Obama mentioned none of that Wednesday. It was as though he left his best attack lines in a folder backstage. Inexplicably, he never mentioned Romney's recently unearthed "47 percent" comment - his line that nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes, that they consider themselves victims, that they're dependent on government and that they're unwilling to take control of their lives.

If those issues weren't worth mentioning during the debate, why has Obama's campaign spent the past four months and hundreds of millions of dollars driving home that message? Perhaps his advisers think they've done all the damage they need do with those attacks. There is evidence that they've stuck. Perhaps the president did not want to project a persona that conflicts with the candidate who captivated the country with a message of hope and inspiration four years ago.

Whatever the case, his performance left Democrats wondering what happened. As one strategist put it in an e-mail message Thursday morning, "ughhh."

Tad Devine, another strategist who was a senior adviser to Democratic nominee John F. Kerry in 2004, sent an e-mail with this assessment of the president's apparent strategy Wednesday: "I assume they had a strategy not to engage or get too personal. He was like he had been in many previous debates, but in these very different times, cool and calm is not as powerful as it once was. They have to recalibrate or risk being pushed aside by the new and improved Romney."

Romney, too, seemed disconnected from the candidate Americans have seen over the past year. On the campaign trail, he is awkward. He is corny and wonky. His stump speeches neither soar nor strike home with real force. Only in debates did he shine during the primaries ,and on Wednesday he was back on comfortable ground. He knew his brief and he seemed happy to deliver it face to face with the president.

Romney did what he wasn't fully able to do at the Republican National Convention, which was to make the debate as much about Obama's record as possible while giving viewers a better sense of what he would do to get the economy moving.

But who was the Romney Americans saw on Wednesday? This was not the candidate who lurched to the right to win the GOP nod. This was not the nominee of a Republican Party that is more conservative than it was when conservative icon Reagan was president. This was moderate Mitt from Massachusetts, the turnaround artist with a plan to fix the economy.

As William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution put it in a post-election analysis, "Romney presented himself as a reasonable man - neither an extremist nor an ideologue. He calmly rebutted familiar attacks on his proposals. He was clear and forceful, tough but respectful."

But in the aftermath of the debate, Romney will face plenty of questions about his agenda, including the one that the president never asked on Wednesday. Romney insisted repeatedly that he does not have a $5 trillion tax-cut plan that would favor the wealthy, although independent analysts have said it would.

If that's not his plan, what is? How much would it cost? And how would he make the math add up? He rebutted Obama's criticism by deflection, not by engagement. He still hasn't said what loopholes and tax expenditures and deductions he would get rid of.

In the hours after the debate, Obama campaign advisers insisted that they would tear into Romney for what he said and didn't say. The president did not make his criticism stick in person. He'll have two more chances to do so in upcoming debates. But the next opportunity will be Vice President Biden's, when he debates GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Thursday in Kentucky. It's unlikely he'll leave the 47-percent issue backstage.

Both sides believe that the contrasts drawn on Wednesday favor their candidates. Obama's team says Romney is on the wrong side of public opinion on Medicare, on dealing with the deficit and on protecting the middle class. The Republican's team argues that Obama is on the wrong side of public opinion in calling for higher taxes, more spending and more regulation. Obama called Romney's economic plan trickle-down; Romney said Obama's plan is "trickle-down government."

Republicans were elated by what happened Wednesday. They knew that a bad performance by Romney might have all but doomed his chances of winning the election. Now they see a race joined again. Stuart Stevens, the campaign's chief strategist and a target of considerable criticism over the past month, looked particularly pleased as he fielded questions from reporters after the debate.

Stevens has argued for months that Obama not taking ownership of his record would be his biggest obstacle to reelection. He said the debate proved that. "I don't think [Obama] had a particularly bad debate," he said. "He has a bad record."

Stevens said polls show a virtual tie nationally and noted that challengers often don't overtake an incumbent until the very end of the campaign. Obama advisers stressed that Romney still has a narrow path through the battleground states to win the 270 electoral votes he needs and they seemed determined to make that part of whatever narrative comes out of Wednesday's exchange.

Democrats were sobered by how the president did during the debate but think that fundamentals still work in his favor. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Romney's victory was "convincing, but hardly changed the race." He said that the Republican's performance probably would win over some GOP-leaning independents who had been wavering or tilted toward Obama, but that underlying forces will help the president.

"That said," he added, "I think the president will have to be much more passionate about the changes he will bring, and bolder. In our dial tests, his best scores were right at the beginning when he laid out four things he would do. People are still looking for what the candidates will do. Obama will have to show much more."

Devine said the effect of the debate is taking away Democrats' hope that Obama might score a big victory in November and help other party members in down-ballot races. "That huge opening may now be lost if Romney makes up ground or, even worse, if it looks like he will win," he said. "People want progress and to turn the page after 11 years of doubt, and last night Romney looked more like the guy who could and would turn that page for them."

Said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic strategist with ties to organized labor: "Romney is a top-notch debater and the president had an off night. Debates are like speed bumps - you have to slow down to get past them but then you can resume your normal cruising speed. The public is evenly divided, and this is going to be a race to the end. Now it's onto the next [debate], but hopefully last night was a wake-up call to anybody on our side who had grown overconfident or complacent."

It will take days for the impact of the exchange to filter through the electorate. Only then will it become clear whether or how much it changed things. Romney far exceeded expectations, and for now that has made this a different contest.

balzd@washpost.com

For previous columns by Dan Balz, go to postpolitics.com.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



633 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Hitting a trifecta in Denver


BYLINE: George F. Will


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 810 words


The presidential campaign, hitherto a plod through a torrent of words tedious beyond words, began to dance in Denver. There a masterfully prepared Mitt Romney completed a trifecta of tasks and unveiled an issue that, because it illustrates contemporary liberalism's repellant essence, can constitute his campaign's closing argument.

Barack Obama, knight of the peevish countenance, illustrated William F. Buckley's axiom that liberals who celebrate tolerance of other views always seem amazed that there are other views. Obama, who is not known as a martyr to the work ethic and who might use a teleprompter when ordering lunch, seemed uncomfortable with a format that allowed fluidity of discourse.

His vanity - remember, he gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod whose menu included two of his speeches - perhaps blinds him to the need to prepare. And to the fact that it is not lese-majeste to require him to defend his campaign ads' dubious assertions with explanations longer than the ads. And to the ample evidence, such as his futile advocacy for Democratic candidates and Obamacare, that his supposed rhetorical gifts are figments of acolytes' imaginations.

Luck is not always the residue of design, and Romney was lucky that the first debate concerned the economy, a subject that to him is a hanging curveball and to Obama is a dancing knuckleball. The topic helped Romney accomplish three things.

First, recent polls showing him losing were on the verge of becoming self-fulfilling prophesies by discouraging his supporters and inspiriting Obama's. Romney, unleashing his inner wonk about economic matters, probably stabilized public opinion and prevented a rush to judgment as early voting accelerates.

Second, Romney needed to be seen tutoring Obama on such elementary distinctions as that between reducing tax rates (while simultaneously reducing, by means-testing, the value of deductions) and reducing revenue, revenue being a function of economic growth, which the rate reductions could stimulate.

Third, Romney needed to rivet the attention of the electorate, in which self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals 2 to 1, on this choice:

America can be the society it was when it had a spring in its step, a society in which markets - the voluntary collaboration of creative individuals - allocate opportunity. Or America can remain today's depressed and anxious society of unprecedented stagnation in the fourth year of a faux recovery - a bleak society in which government incompetently allocates resources in pursuit of its perishable certitudes and on behalf of the politically connected.

Late in the debate, when Romney for a third time referred to Obamacare's creation of "an unelected board, appointed board, who are going to decide what kind of [medical] treatment you ought to have," Obama said, "No, it isn't." Oh?

The Independent Payment Advisory Board perfectly illustrates liberalism's itch to remove choices from individuals, and from their elected representatives, and to repose the power to choose in supposed experts liberated from democratic accountability. Beginning in 2014, IPAB would consist of 15 unelected technocrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB's proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president.

These facts refute Obama's Denver assurance that IPAB "can't make decisions about what treatments are given." It can and will by controlling payments to doctors and hospitals. Hence the emptiness of Obamacare's language that IPAB's proposals "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care."

By Obamacare's terms, Congress can repeal IPAB only during a seven-month window in 2017, and then only by three-fifths majorities in both chambers. After that, the law precludes Congress from ever altering IPAB proposals.

Because IPAB effectively makes law, thereby traducing the separation of powers, and entrenches IPAB in a manner that derogates the powers of future Congresses, it has been well described by a Cato Institute study as "the most anti-constitutional measure ever to pass Congress." But unless and until the Supreme Court - an unreliable guardian - overturns it, IPAB is a harbinger of the "shock and awe statism" (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels's phrase) that is liberalism's prescription for curing the problems supposedly caused by insufficient statism.

Before Denver, Obama's campaign was a protracted exercise in excuse abuse and the promise that he will stay on the statist course he doggedly defends despite evidence of its futility. After Denver, Romney's campaign should advertise that promise.

georgewill@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



634 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Obama looks past debate


BYLINE: Scott Wilson;David Nakamura


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1491 words


President Obama sought to put a sluggish debate performance behind him Thursday with a pair of combative speeches in swing states, as his campaign advisers acknowledged that he would have to change his approach before meeting Republican nominee Mitt Romney again on a national stage.

Obama advisers said the president decided before Wednesday's debate that he would not fight his rival before a prime-time television audience. They acknowledged that Obama will have to do more in the next debate to defend his record and hold Romney more accountable for his economic proposals, which the president sharply criticized Thursday on the campaign trail.

But a wave of anxiety rippled through the Democratic ranks, with many of Obama's supporters suddenly nervous about their candidate with just over a month left before the election. Some leading Democrats played down the debate's significance. Others offered various explanations - including, from former vice president Al Gore, that Obama had been disoriented by Denver's altitude after flying in from the Nevada lowlands - for an uncharacteristically poor public performance from the president.

Attempting to regain the upper hand in what is still a close race, Obama appeared Thursday at campaign rallies in Denver and later in Madison, Wis., in a pair of states critical to his reelection efforts. At both events, Obama roundly criticized Romney as misrepresenting himself and his policies during the debate.

"It couldn't have been the real Mitt Romney," Obama told thousands of supporters gathered in Denver's Sloan's Lake Park, "because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, but the fellow onstage last night did not know anything about that. The real Mitt Romney said we do not need any more teachers in the classroom, but the fellow onstage said he loves teachers, can't get enough of them."

Romney also appeared in Colorado, where he described the debate as a "great opportunity for the American people to see two very different visions for the country." Later he took the stage with his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), in Virginia.

Obama's high spirits on the stump the day after the debate - he mocked Romney several times for pledging to "fire" Big Bird by cutting federal funding to public television - belied his listless demeanor of the previous night.

The president's campaign faced an onslaught of questions about the performance, chiefly: What happened to Obama in Denver? And why hadn't he said the critical things he did Thursday when he had a television audience of nearly 60 million people watching?

"He made a choice last night to answer the questions that were asked and to talk to the American people about what we need to do to move forward and not get into serial fact-checking with Governor Romney, which can be a tiring pursuit," David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser, told reporters.

But Axelrod acknowledged that "I'm sure we will make adjustments," adding later that "we have to strike a balance."

"You can't allow someone to stand there and manhandle the truth about your record and theirs," Axelrod said.

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, told reporters on Air Force One that the president will change his approach for the next presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 16 in New York. "We are obviously going to have to adjust for the fact of Mitt Romney's dishonesty," he said.

For some, particularly members of his party, Obama's decision not to defend himself against Romney's sustained criticism - or draw on some of the successful attacks his campaign has leveled in recent weeks - made him appear absent from the contest.

Heading into the debate, campaign officials said, Obama had decided to augment rather than repeat his campaign advertising that has highlighted Romney's record with Bain Capital and secretly recorded comments he made that disparaged 47 percent of the country as being dependent on the government.

Some instant polls found that Romney came out the winner. Still, it is unclear how his success on the same stage as Obama will translate into new support in a race that has appeared to be tilted toward the president for weeks.

Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg called the defenses of Obama "just like the president's performance last night."

"The campaign, like the president, offered no defense of the president's first-term record or vision for a second term, and instead offered nothing but false attacks, petulant statements and lies about Governor Romney's record," she said.

For much of his presidency, Obama has battled an impression that he is an aloof leader, eager to remain above a political process unpopular with much of the country. How willing he is to fight for his policies remains a mystery to some of his party's leaders.

Often looking down or smiling thinly during a Romney critique, Obama appeared out of sorts for much of Wednesday's debate, irritated by the attacks and uncertain in his responses to them.

The showing appeared so out of character for an orator of Obama's ability that the theories to explain it Thursday sometimes bordered on the bizarre. Some Democratic supporters offered that the president had been flustered by Romney's deceit, or that perhaps he had been pacing himself knowing that two more debates remain. Plouffe suggested that the media wanted a Romney "comeback" story, so much so that pundits overplayed Obama's poor performance.

Presidents often have trouble in their first reelection debates.

After nearly four years in office, they are unaccustomed to being challenged and have a record that their challengers do not. Defensive is often their default position, as incumbents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush demonstrated.

"There is a history of presidents in first debates, and I think we fell prey to it," Axelrod said in an interview. "And Romney is a great actor in a setting like that. That doesn't come naturally to the president."

In his earlier conference call, Axelrod emphasized Romney's "performance" while adding that it was marked by "serial evasions and deceptions." He cited Romney's description of his planned tax cuts as revenue-neutral, his assertion that he would replace Obama's health-care law with a plan that would prevent insurance companies from refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions, and his support for education spending.

"A day after, I think the question for you and for the American people is really one of character," Axelrod said.

Reinforcing that message, the Obama campaign released a new television advertisement Thursday titled "Trust." The ad challenges Romney's contention that his tax-cut plans would not add to the federal deficit, asking, "Why won't Romney level with us about his tax plan, which gives the wealthy huge new tax breaks?"

"Because, according to experts, he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class - or increase the deficit to pay for it," the ad says.

Although Obama's debate performance energized the Romney camp, how many votes it will change is unknown.

A Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the Obama team, said a "dial-in" poll conducted by campaign officials during the debate showed that the president won over more "persuadable" voters than Romney did. The official said that 60 people in a swing state participated in the survey, and that Obama went from a 1 percent lead among them before the debate to 4 percent after it ended.

In Columbus, Ohio, a key state in the race, the debate brought consternation to Obama supporters and reassurance to Romney backers. Few switched sides.

"He was very well-spoken," Obama supporter Jenna Kaun, 31, said of Romney as she drank a cup of coffee at Pistachio Vera. "But he didn't go into details."

Kaun watched the debate with her husband - a rare undecided voter. By the end, she still planned to vote for Obama and he remained undecided. "Romney was on the offense," she said. But her husband, she said, "wishes Romney had more details."

Romney supporter Rita Foley, 52, said she listened to the debate on the radio while driving to her daughter's house.

"I didn't see a clear winner. They seemed pretty matched," she said. Yet, Foley said, "then I got to my daughter's house and she said on TV, Obama looked anxious."

"It really surprised me," she said. "I thought he was supposed to be this great debater."

James Reid, 34, an aircraft mechanic, said he wished that the best ideas of both candidates could be found in a third candidate. For now, the son and grandson of Ford Motor workers from Detroit said he'll vote for Obama.

"When Romney said 'Let Detroit go bankrupt,' he lost my vote at that," Reid said. "He's a businessman, and that's who he's looking out for."

wilsons@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com

Wilson reported from Washington, Nakamura from Denver and Madison, Wis. Rosalind S. Helderman in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



635 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 5, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Niche Web siteslose campaign adsto Google, AOL


BYLINE: Craig Timberg


SECTION: A section; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 984 words


Don't expect any ads for President Obama across the top of Prospect.org, the online incarnation of the liberal monthly magazine American Prospect. However warmly editors there may feel about him, the site is blocking ads from his campaign as part of a pricing dispute that has pitted many political Web sites - on both the left and right - against their ideological allies.

The standoff is an unintended consequence of a broad shift in political advertising this campaign season. More money is going into online ads than ever before, with estimates topping $100 million. But much of this bounty is being distributed through advertising exchanges, such as AOL's Advertising.com and Google AdSense, that serve as middlemen, bypassing the direct buys that long have been key sources of revenue for Web publications.

The ad exchanges have given campaigns greater precision in targeting voters - 30-something women in swing states who visit parenting Web sites, for example. But the exchanges also take a cut of every buy, leaving less for politically oriented sites in what once was their most lucrative season. They say the trend threatens to starve a diffuse ecosystem of online publications that nurture political conversation.

"I don't need Obama to get 20 cents on the dollar," said Ed Connors, advertising director for Prospect.org and the American Prospect. "We're not going to put the Obama ads on the site on the cheap. If they want access to our niche audience, they're going to have to pay full freight."

The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article.

Surging spending on online ads has spawned a new generation of campaign consultants, skilled in new targeting tools and less inclined to spend money on Web sites merely because they support a partisan message. They are increasingly mimicking the tactics of commercial advertisers, which often aim ads not at particular sites but at certain kinds of users and whatever they happen to reading at the time.

This is made possible by cookies - bits of code created by Web browsers - that show advertisers basic demographic information on users and track them from site to site. Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney's campaign, said most of its online ads are purchased that way.

"We're not buying a site. We're buying an audience," Moffatt said. "The power of the Internet is targeting."

Moffatt and other political operatives see this shift as part of the growing sophistication of online political advertising, which in previous elections was mainly a tool for fundraising but now is used to persuade and mobilize voters.

Campaigns are still making some direct buys from politically oriented sites and other online publishers, as Obama did by taking over much of the Web site for the Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday, when early voting began in Ohio. Obama also has bought ads on the Nation, the New Republic, Daily Kos and some smaller sites, said a campaign official.

But the overall move away from direct ad buying has extended to unions, political action committees and campaigns at the state and local levels, depriving political sites of revenue they had expected. Ads that come through exchanges often pay between 5 and 20 percent of the price charged when sites sell ads directly.

"We're talking $100 million on a campaign. Are you telling me there's not $100,000 to spread around?" said John Amato, founder of the left-leaning site Crooks and Liars. "We're here. Hey, don't forget us."

Amato blogged about the issue last month in a post titled "Democratic and Progressive Groups Now Advertise on Cheap Google Ads." At the bottom of the entry was a plea for donations to help make up the lost revenue.

Ire runs particularly high against Google, which operates the largest of the ad networks. It has moved aggressively into political markets in recent years.

"As long as they continue to dominate, and as long as they continue to drive down the price, they will put free press out of business," said Alex Treadway, senior vice president of sales for the Daily Caller, a right-of-center news and commentary site. "As a player in the market, it's hard to compete."

Google serves ads through its search engine, through display spaces it hosts on Web sites and through YouTube, the video site it owns, which has become an especially popular venue for campaign messages this year. Using the distinctive Internet addresses on computers, Google also can target users by state, congressional district, even Zip code, something not possible when a campaign buys ads on an entire site. Other advertising exchanges offer similar services.

"Google, and Google's competitors in the advertising market, really see political advertising from both sides of the aisle as a revenue opportunity," said Rob Saliterman, a former George W. Bush White House official who now leads Google's Republican political ad team.

Google spokesman Jake Parrillo added: "The opportunity for smart publishers who combine their premium placements and audience with the latest technology is enormous. These tools help fund hundreds of political Web sites, large and small."

Other political operatives express skepticism that the loss of revenue from direct ad buys will drive politically oriented Web sites out of business, even if the shift hurts their bottom lines. "I don't think you'll see these political conversations go away," said Chris Talbot, a former Google executive, now a Democratic political consultant.

Prospect.org has traditionally blocked pitches for alcohol, tobacco or gambling, said Connors, the advertising director. When it became clear to him that some campaigns were getting cut-rate access to the site through the exchanges, he decided to block one more genre - political ads.

timbergc@washpost.com

Read more:

- Watch the most popular campaign ads

- Romney benefits from tax plan defense

- Read more from Post Business


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



636 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 5, 2012 Friday 12:17 PM EST


If the jobs report is status quo, who wins?


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 908 words


The political world - fresh off Wednesday's presidential debate - is eagerly awaiting the release of the September jobs report this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It will be looking for some sign of whether (and how) the economic landscape has shifted for the final 32 days of the 2012 campaign.

But what if the report offers no guidance on that subject? That sort of status-quo report is the most likely outcome, according to the Post's chief economic correspondent, Neil Irwin. Writes Irwin:

"While the September jobs report will offer important information on the economic backdrop heading into the final month of the presidential campaign, it would be surprising if the report offered a picture of the economy that was wildly different from what recent months have shown, which is: Job creation is steady but too sluggish to bring down unemployment meaningfully over time."

Despite the less-than-stellar jobs reports in recent months - 96,000 jobs created and an 8.1 percent unemployment rate in August, for example - President Obama has made up ground on Mitt Romney when it comes to handling the economy in the past month or so.

In a late September Washington Post-ABC News poll, 47 percent of people said they thought Obama would do a better job handling the economy, while a similar 47 percent said the same of Romney. That's an improvement for the incumbent from an August poll, in which 43 percent said he would do a better job on the economy, as compared to 50 percent who opted for Romney.

Couple Obama's improving numbers on the economy with a turn toward the optimistic in terms of the direction the country is headed - 38 percent said we are going in the "right direction" in the September Post-ABC poll, the highest that number has been since January 2011 - and it's possible that the struggling economy is already baked into the calculus of most voters.

BuzzFeed concluded just that with a piece this week headlined: "How the economy collapsed (as a political issue)."

And the Post's Greg Sargent offers this:

" It's grounded in a nuance I believe is central to the Obama campaign's understanding of the race: The distinction between whether voters have decided Obama has failed, or whether they have decided he has merely disappointed them by falling short of expectations, an outcome these voters have come to see as understandable, given the circumstances."

Of course, politics is also about context, and the context in which this jobs report will land is decidedly bad for the president. The jobs report comes less than 36 hours after he was clearly bested by Romney in a debate heavily focused on the economy.

If the September jobs report underwhelms - or even just whelms (not a word, but you know what we mean) - it could well fit into a "Romney on the rise" narrative and give the candidate more ammo for his "Obama's not working" messaging.

We'll have some answers at 8:30 this morning. 

New Romney ad features ex-NBA star: President Obama is a favorite of professional athletes - and NBA players in particular.

But Romney is now touting a significant NBA endorsement in Nevada in a new ad.

The ad features former UNLV star and NBA player Greg Anthony, who has worked in recent years as an analyst for TNT and NBA TV, talking about why he no longer supports Obama.

"I voted for Barack Obama, thought he'd be a centrist," Anthony says in the ad. "I really lost faith in him. I'm supporting Mitt Romney. He's a no-excuse kind of guy, and I think over the last few years, we've heard enough excuses."

Anthony starred on the 1990 UNLV team that won a national championship, and he played almost the entire year with a broken jaw.

The Romney campaign is also out with a new jobs-focused ad and another jobs ad geared specifically toward Ohio.

Fixbits:

Top Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter acknowledges that Romney doesn't, in fact, propose a $5 trillion tax cut, but says it's close to that.

Debate ratings exceeded the first debate of 2008.

The Democratic co-chair of the Presidential Debate Commissions said Thursday that future debates might need "a firmer hand on the tiller" after moderator Jim Lehrer largely let the candidates dictate the back-and-forth on Wednesday.

A new ad from Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) hits Elizabeth Warren (D) for serving as a lawyer for big corporations facing payments to victims of asbestos poisoning.

Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R), under fire for not hitting the campaign trail hard enough in his Senate race, is avoiding questions about whether he inflated the number of campaign stops he made on Monday.

Two new ads, one from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and one from Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), hit Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) for filing a lawsuit against his local fire department after wildfires damaged his property. Rehberg later dropped the suit amidst public concern about the cost of the suit.

Another new DSCC ad in Indiana.

Must-reads:

"Web sites lose to Google in race for Obama, Romney campaign ads" - Craig Timberg, Washington Post

"In Iowa and Beyond, Tough Tests for Tea Party Favorites" - Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times

"Mitt Romney must prove that debate performance was the real him" - Philip Rucker, Washington Post

"Obama plans to change approach before next presidential debate with Romney" - Scott Wilson and David Nakamura, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



637 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 5, 2012 Friday 11:53 AM EST


Ad Watch: Romney says Obama will raise middle-class taxes


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 142 words


Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee, "Who will raise taxes?"

What it says: "According to an independent, nonpartisan study, Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000."

What it means: After a debate in which middle-class taxes played a major role, Mitt Romney is pressing his advantage in hopes of changing polls that show voters think he will favor the rich.

Factchecker: Three Pinocchios. "The study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad claims, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes."

Who will see it: The RNC and Romney campaign together just bought $1,705,360 of time in Ohio and $1,774,630 in Florida. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



638 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


Taking a close look at the 'independent' study that Romney's ad touts


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06


LENGTH: 923 words


"Who will raise taxes on the middle class? According to an independent, nonpartisan study, Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000. The same organization says the plan from Mitt Romney and common-sense conservatives is not a tax hike on the middle class."

- Voiceover from a new

Mitt Romney campaign ad

Dueling studies!

Politicians love nothing more than to point to an "independent" study that backs up their political position. Thus, in the first presidential debate, President Obama could claim that GOP rival Mitt Romney has a plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion, with tax breaks for the wealthy and tax hikes for the middle class. And Romney could adamantly deny that, citing six studies of his own.

There is usually less to such studies than the claims they are said to support. Let's explore how such studies are used in a new advertisement the Romney campaign released just hours after the debate ended.

The Facts

The "independent, nonpartisan" organization cited by the Romney campaign is the American Enterprise Institute, which bills itself as "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise." A who's who of Republican heavyweights - such as Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Thiessen, Danielle Pletka, John Yoo and John Bolton - is affiliated with it, but in order to maintain its tax status as a 501(c)3 organization, it cannot proclaim any political affiliation.

AEI is one of the top think tanks in Washington; its scholars are respected and ideologically varied. But most people would regard it as right-leaning.

The Romney campaign probably wants to tag AEI as nonpartisan because the group that produced the study that Obama cited, the Tax Policy Center, often is described as nonpartisan. The Tax Policy Center is affiliated with the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution - and Brookings is frequently seen as a left counterpart to AEI. Never mind that the Romney campaign once referred to a Tax Policy Center study as an "objective, third-party analysis."

The first study mentioned in the Romney ad - supposedly showing "Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000"- is actually a very dry report titled "A Simple Measure of the Distributional Burden of Debt Accumulation." The study tries to calculate the burden of servicing the national debt by various income groups, examining what would happen under current law, current policies and Obama's budget. (Current law refers to policies that are supposed to happen, such as expiring tax cuts; current policy reflects the fact that Congress has said it will not let certain tax cuts expire.)

Among the three scenarios, there's actually not much difference - for households making $100,000 to $200,000, the burden would be $2,800 to $5,400 a year through 2022 - and the administration's budget falls right in the middle. In other words, the study shows how much lower taxes could be if the nation did not keep adding to the debt load; it does not show, as the ad claims, that Obama has some sort of secret plan to raise taxes.

Presumably, a Romney budget would fall in the same range, but he has not provided detailed plans. "We aren't really able to run the overall numbers for Romney because we were trying to use the plans for which we had good budget projections," said Matthew Jensen, one of the co-authors.

Indeed, the study also looks at how the distributional burden rose under George W. Bush - and he of course cut taxes, repeatedly. So just because the debt burden rises, that is not proof that a president will raise taxes.

"The ad correctly states what was outlined in the American Enterprise Institute's study," a Romney spokesman said.

The second study mentioned in the ad is an article for AEI's online magazine, titled "The Romney Tax Plan: Not a Tax Hike on the Middle Class." Alex Brill, the author, said he was motivated to write it because "all the ads the Democrats are running are false" in claiming that Romney plans to raise taxes on the middle class. In the article, Brill attempts to discredit the Tax Policy Center study.

The difficulty is that there is no fully detailed Romney plan that explains how he would reconcile his twin goals of reducing tax rates across the board and then closing enough loopholes to make it revenue-neutral. The Tax Policy Center concluded it could not be done without raising taxes on the middle class or boosting the deficit - hence the Democratic ads - but the head of the Tax Policy Center cautioned: "I don't interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives."

Romney has been inconsistent in describing his tax plan. In this week's debate, he declared, "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." But in the GOP Arizona debate in February, he said, "We're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent."

The Pinocchio Test

The Romney campaign clearly wants to counter Obama ads that misleadingly suggest he plans to raises taxes on the middle class. But the campaign really pushes the envelope in asserting that the AEI study shows that Obama "will raise taxes on the middle class." That's not what the study says - by a long shot.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



639 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 86 words


A Romney ad, and the real numbers behind it

A Romney ad released just hours after Wednesday's debate says a study found that President Obama would raise middle-class taxes. Did it?

The Fact Checker, A6

Was the debate Romney the real Romney?

The Republican's challenge is to convince voters that the steady, decisive, in-command competitor seen in the first presidential debate is the real him. A4

A tale of four candidates

Dan Balz says there's no comparing the two men on the debate stage and the two on the trail. The Take,A4


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



640 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition


Romney takes newly aggressive stance on his tax plan


BYLINE: Lori Montgomery;Peyton M. Craighill


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1016 words


With his forceful denial of charges that he would raise taxes on the middle class, Mitt Romney used Wednesday's debate to launch an aggressive new effort to regain his footing in the battle over taxes.

In one of the debate's first exchanges, the Republican presidential nominee directly challenged President Obama's assertion that Romney's tax plan would finance big new breaks for the wealthy by wiping out popular deductions for those who earn less than $250,000 a year.

"I know that you and your running mate keep saying that. I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case," Romney said onstage in Denver. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And . . . I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families."

Hours later, Romney released a new TV ad arguing that Obama, not Romney, is the bigger threat to middle-class pocketbooks - the second this week. Neither spot offers new information about how Romney would pay for his tax plan, which is heavy on promises but light on details. Instead, the ads seek to shift the conversation to more comfortable territory for Republicans: Which candidate is more likely to raise taxes?

Vice President Biden appeared to play into Romney's hands on that front Thursday, acknowledging that he and Obama want to let taxes rise by $1 trillion for the nation's wealthiest households over the next decade.

"Yes, we do," Biden said at an event in Iowa. ''On top of the trillions of dollars in spending that we have already cut, we're going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks. Come on, man. . . . That's not a tax raise. That's called fairness where I come from."

The pushback from Romney comes as Republicans are widely concerned that he is doing a poor job of defending his tax plan, the centerpiece of his agenda for sparking economic growth and creating jobs. Public opinion polls have shown that Obama has held a consistent advantage on the question of which candidate voters trust more to handle taxes. A Washington Post poll last month in the critical swing state of Ohio found Obama ahead on the tax question by 17 percentage points.

Asked about the polls on Thursday, Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie said, "The Obama campaign has spent a ton of money trying to convince voters that Governor Romney would raise taxes on the middle class."

Gillespie said Romney is fighting back now - fully two months after Obama first launched his attack - to take advantage of the national exposure of the debate.

"We want to weigh in heavily with ads on the subject after 60 million people had a chance to hear him set the record straight," Gillespie said.

Romney's sharp performance cheered conservatives, who worried that Obama's edge on the tax issue could do lasting damage to the cause of tax revision, which has been gaining momentum in both parties.

"He made the point that this is a pro-growth tax cut," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "I would have preferred this to be the conversation for the last six months. But I'll take that it's the issue for the last month of the campaign."

Romney's plan calls for cutting income tax rates by 20 percent for people at all income levels, repealing the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, and wiping out capital gains taxes for middle-class families.

Those cuts would drain nearly $5 trillion out of the Treasury over the next decade, according to budget analysts. Romney has vowed to replace the lost revenue by scaling back "loopholes and deductions," but he has declined to say which ones.

That lack of detail created a political opening for Obama, who in August latched on to a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that declared Romney's goals for tax revisions "not mathematically possible."

The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, found that Romney's rate cuts would reduce tax collections from individuals by $360 billion in 2015. To avoid increasing deficits, it said, the plan would have to generate an equal sum by cutting tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, medical expenses and child care - all breaks that benefit the middle class.

Even if Americans in the upper tax brackets were targeted first, the study found, "there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion [a year] from those making over $200,000 to those making less" than that. As a result, millionaires would get an $87,000 tax cut, on average, while 95 percent of the population's taxes would rise about 1.2 percent, an average of $500 a year.

In television ads and on the campaign trail, Obama has cited the study relentlessly, with little response from Romney until this week. "Amid this barrage, Mr. Romney has . . . played dumb, as in silent," the Wall Street Journal editorial page said on the morning of the debate.

Worried academics and think-tank fellows came to Romney's defense, arguing that Romney could pay for his tax cuts in any number of ways without harming the middle class. He could end the exemption for interest earned on state and local bonds, for example, or tax the buildup of value inside life insurance policies.

In the meantime, the Romney campaign is citing a study from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to accuse Obama of a secret plot to tax the middle class more. The ad unveiled on Thursday claims that, in order to make payments on the national debt over the next decade, "Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000."

Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement that the ad "gets an F in honesty" and "has nothing to do with the president's proposals."

Romney's newly aggressive stance appears to be helping his cause, at least initially. A CBS News instant survey of uncommitted voters found that they favored Obama by a significant margin on the tax issue going into Wednesday's debate. Immediately afterward, the numbers flipped.

montgomeryl@washpost.com

craighillp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



641 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


Romney gets his way against a listless Obama


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 902 words


Okay, who thinks President Obama should have taken his wife out for their anniversary instead of debating Mitt Romney?

With or without the sound on, Romney dominated the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night. He came off as ready, reasonable and, crucially, not even a little bit of a doofus.

The president, on the other hand, looked like he would rather have been anywhere else and, perhaps in an effort to avoid one of those "You're likable enough, Hillary" outbreaks of flaming smarty-pants-itis, let his rival get away with a lot: He was even unaggressive in challenging that tried-and-untrue talking point about how Obama has raided Medicare to pay for "Obamacare." And the same goes for Romney's out-of-nowhere assertion that he wants to keep parts of Dodd-Frank and lower the boom on Wall Street.

While Romney earned an A for affect, Obama looked down, looked away and sometimes even nodded encouragingly as Romney finally kicked off his general election campaign, suddenly presenting himself as a uniter and friend of the working stiff.

But worst in my book was the president's weak mewl of a closing statement: "You know, four years ago, I said that I'm not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president. And that's probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I've kept. But I also promised that I'd fight every single day on behalf of the American people. . . . I've kept that promise, and if you'll vote for me, then I promise I'll fight just as hard in a second term."

The unenergetic way he said that he'd fight communicated just the opposite and reminded me of how sometimes my kids sound, telling me they'll try to accomplish whatever chore I have in store. When they put it that way, I am well and truly warned that they have little to no intention of actually following through. And the president's general lack of get-up-and-go played right into the Republican argument that he's a well-intentioned sort who hasn't gotten it done - and, despite his best efforts, won't.

When Obama argued that the Romney tax plan doesn't add up and isn't equitable, the governor called him a fibber in the sunniest possible way: "I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case. Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it."

Obama, on the other hand, seemed at a loss about how to bat down whoppers without being disagreeable. When he did lash out, it was at poor Jim Lehrer, who had just told him his two minutes were up: "I had five seconds before you interrupted me." Boo-hoo, but that's not on the list of things presidents get to cry over.

The moderator so let Romney control the debate that if elected, the Republican might want to rethink his plan to defund Big Bird's network. Why, in a campaign in which there's been such a lack of specificity, the longtime PBS anchor lobbed a big-picture question about the role of government near the debate's end was a stumper. And he even broke one of Julia Child's cardinal rules for cooking and life - "You should never apologize at the table. People will think, 'Yes, it's really not so good' " - when he said that, with time too rapidly running out, "I'm not going to . . . say your answers have been too long or I've done a poor job."

One Republican who may not have loved every moment of Romney's performance is Indiana Senate candidate and tea party favorite Richard Mourdock, whose Democratic rival, Joe Donnelly, has been running a series of hilarious and highly effective ads against what he calls Mourdock's "my way or the highway" approach to working across the aisle. Romney likely earned a cameo in a future Donnelly ad when he said, "My experience as a governor is if I come in and lay down a piece of legislation and say, 'It's my way or the highway,' I don't get a lot done."

The "zingers" Team Romney promised did not really materialize, unless you count this one: "Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts." Nor, alas, did the president answer Romney's assertion that "the place you put your money just makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is" with a reference to Romney's accounts in the Caymans.

Perhaps the boldest moment of the night came when Romney cast himself as eager to crack down on the financial sector. At every campaign stop, he rails against regulation in general and Dodd-Frank in particular. In Denver, however, he sounded like a different man: "We're not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world."

So will conservatives be inflamed by this unrecognizably moderate rhetoric? On the contrary; this once, they surely agree with Nancy Pelosi's bottom-line advice to Democratic House candidates: "Just win, baby."

The overall impression was that these two men are not as far apart as advertised, but only one had had his energy drink, and the other was hoping not to spend his next wedding anniversary in front of millions of people.

Henneberger is a Washington Post political writer and anchors the paper's "She the People" blog. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaDC.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



642 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Regional Edition


Hitting a trifecta in Denver


BYLINE: George F. Will


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 810 words


The presidential campaign, hitherto a plod through a torrent of words tedious beyond words, began to dance in Denver. There a masterfully prepared Mitt Romney completed a trifecta of tasks and unveiled an issue that, because it illustrates contemporary liberalism's repellant essence, can constitute his campaign's closing argument.

Barack Obama, knight of the peevish countenance, illustrated William F. Buckley's axiom that liberals who celebrate tolerance of other views always seem amazed that there are other views. Obama, who is not known as a martyr to the work ethic and who might use a teleprompter when ordering lunch, seemed uncomfortable with a format that allowed fluidity of discourse.

His vanity - remember, he gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod whose menu included two of his speeches - perhaps blinds him to the need to prepare. And to the fact that it is not lese-majeste to require him to defend his campaign ads' dubious assertions with explanations longer than the ads. And to the ample evidence, such as his futile advocacy for Democratic candidates and Obamacare, that his supposed rhetorical gifts are figments of acolytes' imaginations.

Luck is not always the residue of design, and Romney was lucky that the first debate concerned the economy, a subject that to him is a hanging curveball and to Obama is a dancing knuckleball. The topic helped Romney accomplish three things.

First, recent polls showing him losing were on the verge of becoming self-fulfilling prophesies by discouraging his supporters and inspiriting Obama's. Romney, unleashing his inner wonk about economic matters, probably stabilized public opinion and prevented a rush to judgment as early voting accelerates.

Second, Romney needed to be seen tutoring Obama on such elementary distinctions as that between reducing tax rates (while simultaneously reducing, by means-testing, the value of deductions) and reducing revenue, revenue being a function of economic growth, which the rate reductions could stimulate.

Third, Romney needed to rivet the attention of the electorate, in which self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals 2 to 1, on this choice:

America can be the society it was when it had a spring in its step, a society in which markets - the voluntary collaboration of creative individuals - allocate opportunity. Or America can remain today's depressed and anxious society of unprecedented stagnation in the fourth year of a faux recovery - a bleak society in which government incompetently allocates resources in pursuit of its perishable certitudes and on behalf of the politically connected.

Late in the debate, when Romney for a third time referred to Obamacare's creation of "an unelected board, appointed board, who are going to decide what kind of [medical] treatment you ought to have," Obama said, "No, it isn't." Oh?

The Independent Payment Advisory Board perfectly illustrates liberalism's itch to remove choices from individuals, and from their elected representatives, and to repose the power to choose in supposed experts liberated from democratic accountability. Beginning in 2014, IPAB would consist of 15 unelected technocrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB's proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president.

These facts refute Obama's Denver assurance that IPAB "can't make decisions about what treatments are given." It can and will by controlling payments to doctors and hospitals. Hence the emptiness of Obamacare's language that IPAB's proposals "shall not include any recommendation to ration health care."

By Obamacare's terms, Congress can repeal IPAB only during a seven-month window in 2017, and then only by three-fifths majorities in both chambers. After that, the law precludes Congress from ever altering IPAB proposals.

Because IPAB effectively makes law, thereby traducing the separation of powers, and entrenches IPAB in a manner that derogates the powers of future Congresses, it has been well described by a Cato Institute study as "the most anti-constitutional measure ever to pass Congress." But unless and until the Supreme Court - an unreliable guardian - overturns it, IPAB is a harbinger of the "shock and awe statism" (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels's phrase) that is liberalism's prescription for curing the problems supposedly caused by insufficient statism.

Before Denver, Obama's campaign was a protracted exercise in excuse abuse and the promise that he will stay on the statist course he doggedly defends despite evidence of its futility. After Denver, Romney's campaign should advertise that promise.

georgewill@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



643 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


Niche Web siteslose campaign adsto Google, AOL


BYLINE: Craig Timberg


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 976 words


Don't expect any ads for President Obama across the top of Prospect.org, the online incarnation of the liberal monthly magazine American Prospect. However warmly editors there may feel about him, the site is blocking ads from his campaign as part of a pricing dispute that has pitted many political Web sites - on both the left and right - against their ideological allies.

The standoff is an unintended consequence of a broad shift in political advertising this campaign season. More money is going into online ads than ever before, with estimates topping $100 million. But much of this bounty is being distributed through advertising exchanges, such as AOL's Advertising.com and Google AdSense, that serve as middlemen, bypassing the direct buys that long have been key sources of revenue for Web publications.

The ad exchanges have given campaigns greater precision in targeting voters - 30-something women in swing states who visit parenting Web sites, for example. But the exchanges also take a cut of every buy, leaving less for politically oriented sites in what once was their most lucrative season. They say the trend threatens to starve a diffuse ecosystem of online publications that nurture political conversation.

"I don't need Obama to get 20 cents on the dollar," said Ed Connors, advertising director for Prospect.org and the American Prospect. "We're not going to put the Obama ads on the site on the cheap. If they want access to our niche audience, they're going to have to pay full freight."

The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article.

Surging spending on online ads has spawned a new generation of campaign consultants, skilled in new targeting tools and less inclined to spend money on Web sites merely because they support a partisan message. They are increasingly mimicking the tactics of commercial advertisers, which often aim ads not at particular sites but at certain kinds of users and whatever they happen to reading at the time.

This is made possible by cookies - bits of code created by Web browsers - that show advertisers basic demographic information on users and track them from site to site. Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney's campaign, said most of its online ads are purchased that way.

"We're not buying a site. We're buying an audience," Moffatt said. "The power of the Internet is targeting."

Moffatt and other political operatives see this shift as part of the growing sophistication of online political advertising, which in previous elections was mainly a tool for fundraising but now is used to persuade and mobilize voters.

Campaigns are still making some direct buys from politically oriented sites and other online publishers, as Obama did by taking over much of the Web site for the Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday, when early voting began in Ohio. Obama also has bought ads on the Nation, the New Republic, Daily Kos and some smaller sites, said a campaign official.

But the overall move away from direct ad buying has extended to unions, political action committees and campaigns at the state and local levels, depriving political sites of revenue they had expected. Ads that come through exchanges often pay between 5 and 20 percent of the price charged when sites sell ads directly.

"We're talking $100 million on a campaign. Are you telling me there's not $100,000 to spread around?" said John Amato, founder of the left-leaning site Crooks and Liars. "We're here. Hey, don't forget us."

Amato blogged about the issue last month in a post titled "Democratic and Progressive Groups Now Advertise on Cheap Google Ads." At the bottom of the entry was a plea for donations to help make up the lost revenue.

Ire runs particularly high against Google, which operates the largest of the ad networks. It has moved aggressively into political markets in recent years.

"As long as they continue to dominate, and as long as they continue to drive down the price, they will put free press out of business," said Alex Treadway, senior vice president of sales for the Daily Caller, a right-of-center news and commentary site. "As a player in the market, it's hard to compete."

Google serves ads through its search engine, through display spaces it hosts on Web sites and through YouTube, the video site it owns, which has become an especially popular venue for campaign messages this year. Using the distinctive Internet addresses on computers, Google also can target users by state, congressional district, even Zip code, something not possible when a campaign buys ads on an entire site. Other advertising exchanges offer similar services.

"Google, and Google's competitors in the advertising market, really see political advertising from both sides of the aisle as a revenue opportunity," said Rob Saliterman, a former George W. Bush White House official who now leads Google's Republican political ad team.

Google spokesman Jake Parrillo added: "The opportunity for smart publishers who combine their premium placements and audience with the latest technology is enormous. These tools help fund hundreds of political Web sites, large and small."

Other political operatives express skepticism that the loss of revenue from direct ad buys will drive politically oriented Web sites out of business, even if the shift hurts their bottom lines. "I don't think you'll see these political conversations go away," said Chris Talbot, a former Google executive, now a Democratic political consultant.

Prospect.org has traditionally blocked pitches for alcohol, tobacco or gambling, said Connors, the advertising director. When it became clear to him that some campaigns were getting cut-rate access to the site through the exchanges, he decided to block one more genre - political ads.

timbergc@washpost.com

Read more:

- Watch the most popular campaign ads

- Romney benefits from tax plan defense

- Read more from Post Business


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



644 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition


Obama looks past debate


BYLINE: Scott Wilson;David Nakamura


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1490 words


President Obama sought to put a sluggish debate performance behind him Thursday with a pair of combative speeches in swing states, as his campaign advisers acknowledged that he would have to change his approach before meeting Republican nominee Mitt Romney again on a national stage.

Obama advisers said the president decided before Wednesday's debate that he would not fight his rival before a prime-time television audience. They acknowledged that Obama will have to do more in the next debate to defend his record and hold Romney more accountable for his economic proposals, which the president sharply criticized Thursday on the campaign trail.

But a wave of anxiety rippled through the Democratic ranks, with many of Obama's supporters suddenly nervous about their candidate with just over a month left before the election. Some leading Democrats played down the debate's significance. Others offered various explanations - including, from former vice president Al Gore, that Obama had been disoriented by Denver's altitude after flying in from the Nevada lowlands - for an uncharacteristically poor public performance from the president.

Attempting to regain the upper hand in what is still a close race, Obama appeared Thursday at campaign rallies in Denver and later in Madison, Wis., in a pair of states critical to his reelection efforts. At both events, Obama roundly criticized Romney as misrepresenting himself and his policies during the debate.

"It couldn't have been the real Mitt Romney," Obama told thousands of supporters gathered in Denver's Sloan's Lake Park, "because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, but the fellow onstage last night did not know anything about that. The real Mitt Romney said we do not need any more teachers in the classroom, but the fellow onstage said he loves teachers, can't get enough of them."

Romney also appeared in Colorado, where he described the debate as a "great opportunity for the American people to see two very different visions for the country." Later he took the stage with his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), in Virginia.

Obama's high spirits on the stump the day after the debate - he mocked Romney several times for pledging to "fire" Big Bird by cutting federal funding to public television - belied his listless demeanor of the previous night.

The president's campaign faced an onslaught of questions about the performance, chiefly: What happened to Obama in Denver? And why hadn't he said the critical things he did Thursday when he had a television audience of nearly 60 million people watching?

"He made a choice last night to answer the questions that were asked and to talk to the American people about what we need to do to move forward and not get into serial fact-checking with Governor Romney, which can be a tiring pursuit," David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser, told reporters.

But Axelrod acknowledged that "I'm sure we will make adjustments," adding later that "we have to strike a balance."

"You can't allow someone to stand there and manhandle the truth about your record and theirs," Axelrod said.

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, told reporters on Air Force One that the president will change his approach for the next presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 16 in New York. "We are obviously going to have to adjust for the fact of Mitt Romney's dishonesty," he said.

For some, particularly members of his party, Obama's decision not to defend himself against Romney's sustained criticism - or draw on some of the successful attacks his campaign has leveled in recent weeks - made him appear absent from the contest.

Heading into the debate, campaign officials said, Obama had decided to augment rather than repeat his campaign advertising that has highlighted Romney's record with Bain Capital and secretly recorded comments he made that disparaged 47 percent of the country as being dependent on the government.

Some instant polls found that Romney came out the winner. Still, it is unclear how his success on the same stage as Obama will translate into new support in a race that has appeared to be tilted toward the president for weeks.

Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg called the defenses of Obama "just like the president's performance last night."

"The campaign, like the president, offered no defense of the president's first-term record or vision for a second term, and instead offered nothing but false attacks, petulant statements and lies about Governor Romney's record," she said.

For much of his presidency, Obama has battled an impression that he is an aloof leader, eager to remain above a political process unpopular with much of the country. How willing he is to fight for his policies remains a mystery to some of his party's leaders.

Often looking down or smiling thinly during a Romney critique, Obama appeared out of sorts for much of Wednesday's debate, irritated by the attacks and uncertain in his responses to them.

The showing appeared so out of character for an orator of Obama's ability that the theories to explain it Thursday sometimes bordered on the bizarre. Some Democratic supporters offered that the president had been flustered by Romney's deceit, or that perhaps he had been pacing himself knowing that two more debates remain. Plouffe suggested that the media wanted a Romney "comeback" story, so much so that pundits overplayed Obama's poor performance.

Presidents often have trouble in their first reelection debates.

After nearly four years in office, they are unaccustomed to being challenged and have a record that their challengers do not. Defensive is often their default position, as incumbents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush demonstrated.

"There is a history of presidents in first debates, and I think we fell prey to it," Axelrod said in an interview. "And Romney is a great actor in a setting like that. That doesn't come naturally to the president."

In his earlier conference call, Axelrod emphasized Romney's "performance" while adding that it was marked by "serial evasions and deceptions." He cited Romney's description of his planned tax cuts as revenue-neutral, his assertion that he would replace Obama's health-care law with a plan that would prevent insurance companies from refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions, and his support for education spending.

"A day after, I think the question for you and for the American people is really one of character," Axelrod said.

Reinforcing that message, the Obama campaign released a new television advertisement Thursday titled "Trust." The ad challenges Romney's contention that his tax-cut plans would not add to the federal deficit, asking, "Why won't Romney level with us about his tax plan, which gives the wealthy huge new tax breaks?"

"Because, according to experts, he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class - or increase the deficit to pay for it," the ad says.

Although Obama's debate performance energized the Romney camp, how many votes it will change is unknown.

A Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the Obama team, said a "dial-in" poll conducted by campaign officials during the debate showed that the president won over more "persuadable" voters than Romney did. The official said that 60 people in a swing state participated in the survey, and that Obama went from a 1 percent lead among them before the debate to 4 percent after it ended.

In Columbus, Ohio, a key state in the race, the debate brought consternation to Obama supporters and reassurance to Romney backers. Few switched sides.

"He was very well-spoken," Obama supporter Jenna Kaun, 31, said of Romney as she drank a cup of coffee at Pistachio Vera. "But he didn't go into details."

Kaun watched the debate with her husband - a rare undecided voter. By the end, she still planned to vote for Obama and he remained undecided. "Romney was on the offense," she said. But her husband, she said, "wishes Romney had more details."

Romney supporter Rita Foley, 52, said she listened to the debate on the radio while driving to her daughter's house.

"I didn't see a clear winner. They seemed pretty matched," she said. Yet, Foley said, "then I got to my daughter's house and she said on TV, Obama looked anxious."

"It really surprised me," she said. "I thought he was supposed to be this great debater."

James Reid, 34, an aircraft mechanic, said he wished that the best ideas of both candidates could be found in a third candidate. For now, the son and grandson of Ford Motor workers from Detroit said he'll vote for Obama.

"When Romney said 'Let Detroit go bankrupt,' he lost my vote at that," Reid said. "He's a businessman, and that's who he's looking out for."

wilsons@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com

Wilson reported from Washington, Nakamura from Denver and Madison, Wis. Rosalind S. Helderman in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



645 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Every Edition


One deliciously dark tale


BYLINE: Michael O'Sullivan


SECTION: WEEKEND; Pg. T32


LENGTH: 617 words


During the next month, Americans will be called upon to make a choice between two very distinct visions. No, not Obama vs. Romney. I'm talking about "Frankenweenie" vs. "Hotel Transylvania."

The two animated, monster-movie-themed releases - both timed to coincide with the pre-Halloween season - are almost polar opposites. Opening last week to mostly negative reviews, "Hotel Transylvania" is aimed squarely at the very youngest viewers, with tired jokes about flatulence and an insipid lead performance by Adam Sandler as Count Dracula.

"Frankenweenie," on the other hand, arrives this weekend with a very different pedigree, and a jolt of jangly energy. The story of a young science nerd who brings his dead dog back to life with a blast from a lightning bolt, "Frankenweenie" is an expansive new adaptation by Tim Burton of his 1984 live-action short of the same name. Designed to appeal to both discriminating adults and older kids, the gorgeous, black-and-white stop-motion film is a fresh, clever and affectionate love letter to classic horror movies.

Warning: It is decidedly not for little children. Like Burton's 1984 short, which famously got the filmmaker fired from Disney for being too intense for tots, "Frankenweenie" is a deliciously dark tale. At least one youngster could be heard loudly whimpering during a recent screening, begging to be taken home. The grown-ups in the audience, however, seemed to love it.

Transplanting Mary Shelley's 19th-century story to the 1950s, "Frankenweenie" is the story of 10-year-old Victor Frankenstein (voice of Charlie Tahan), a bookish loner whose best friend is his dog, Sparky. After Sparky is hit by a car, a desperate, distraught Victor applies some half-remembered lessons in electricity from his slightly unhinged science teacher (Martin Landau) and reanimates the pet pooch, one dark and stormy night.

All is well until some of Victor's classmates get wind of the secret experiment and begin resurrecting all of their dearly departed pets, too, including a hamster and some Sea-Monkeys. (It helps if you're old enough to know what "Sea-Monkeys" - a.k.a. brine shrimp - even are. "Just add water," read the old ad, which used to run in the back of comic books.) That they turn into something resembling the evil beasties from "Gremlins" is only one of several loving homages to the cinematic world of creature features. One Japanese-American kid, Toshiaki (James Hiroyuki Liao) unleashes a Godzilla-like monster when his late pet turtle - mischievously named Shelley - turns into a giant, rampaging reptile.

It's great fun.

So is the overall look of the film, which portrays Victor and everyone else in it as pallid, sunken-eyed (though lovable) ghouls. The boy who first discovers Victor's secret is a hunchbacked kid named Edgar - more familiarly known as "E" - Gore (Atticus Shaffer). You have to say it out loud to get the pun.

Screenwriter John August, who worked with Burton on "Dark Shadows" and other films, fills "Frankenweenie" with lots of equally wonderful, if silly, in-jokes.

Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short vividly portray Victor's parents, along with a variety of other characters. And as Victor's next-door neighbor Elsa Van Helsing, Winona Ryder seems to be channeling her sardonic character from Burton's 1988 hit "Beetlejuice." It's a knowing nod to a great performance, rather than a retread.

The choice here is clear. Leave "Hotel Transylvania," and its soulless, Saturday-morning computer animation, to the wee ones. But for a touch of Saturday night sophistication, you can't do better than "Frankenweenie."

osullivanm@washpost.com

PG. At area theaters. Contains some scary images and morbid thematic material. 87 minutes.


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



646 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 5, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


A tale of four candidates


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1524 words


DATELINE: DENVER


DENVER - Wednesday's presidential debate was a tale of four candidates: the two men who stood onstage for 90 minutes and the two rivals Americans have seen for months on the campaign trail and in television commercials. There was no comparison.

Start with President Obama, who may have lost the exchange in as lopsided a manner as any incumbent in recent times. Others have stumbled in the first debates of their reelection campaigns. Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George W. Bush in 2004 come to mind. Both had bad moments that cost them their debates.

Obama didn't lose because he had a few bad moments. Challenger Mitt Romney dictated the tone and the tempo of the evening, at times acting as candidate and moderator. The president fell behind in the opening minutes and never really found his footing. He lacked energy stylistically and he lacked crispness substantively. He sounded like he does in his news conferences: at times discursive and often giving answers that were longer than necessary.

This wasn't the Obama seen in his campaign commercials or in the daily scrum with Romney's operation. His team has waged an extraordinarily aggressive effort from the moment Romney wrapped up the Republican nomination.

Given his vulnerability over the state of the economy, Obama and his advisers sought to define Romney before Romney could define himself. It seemed to work. The campaign attacked the Republican for his work at Bain Capital, for not immediately releasing his tax returns, for putting money in a Swiss bank account and in the Cayman Islands.

Obama mentioned none of that Wednesday. It was as though he left his best attack lines in a folder backstage. Inexplicably, he never mentioned Romney's recently unearthed "47 percent" comment - his line that nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes, that they consider themselves victims, that they're dependent on government and that they're unwilling to take control of their lives.

If those issues weren't worth mentioning during the debate, why has Obama's campaign spent the past four months and hundreds of millions of dollars driving home that message? Perhaps his advisers think they've done all the damage they need do with those attacks. There is evidence that they've stuck. Perhaps the president did not want to project a persona that conflicts with the candidate who captivated the country with a message of hope and inspiration four years ago.

Whatever the case, his performance left Democrats wondering what happened. As one strategist put it in an e-mail message Thursday morning, "ughhh."

Tad Devine, another strategist who was a senior adviser to Democratic nominee John F. Kerry in 2004, sent an e-mail with this assessment of the president's apparent strategy Wednesday: "I assume they had a strategy not to engage or get too personal. He was like he had been in many previous debates, but in these very different times, cool and calm is not as powerful as it once was. They have to recalibrate or risk being pushed aside by the new and improved Romney."

Romney, too, seemed disconnected from the candidate Americans have seen over the past year. On the campaign trail, he is awkward. He is corny and wonky. His stump speeches neither soar nor strike home with real force. Only in debates did he shine during the primaries ,and on Wednesday he was back on comfortable ground. He knew his brief and he seemed happy to deliver it face to face with the president.

Romney did what he wasn't fully able to do at the Republican National Convention, which was to make the debate as much about Obama's record as possible while giving viewers a better sense of what he would do to get the economy moving.

But who was the Romney Americans saw on Wednesday? This was not the candidate who lurched to the right to win the GOP nod. This was not the nominee of a Republican Party that is more conservative than it was when conservative icon Reagan was president. This was moderate Mitt from Massachusetts, the turnaround artist with a plan to fix the economy.

As William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution put it in a post-election analysis, "Romney presented himself as a reasonable man - neither an extremist nor an ideologue. He calmly rebutted familiar attacks on his proposals. He was clear and forceful, tough but respectful."

But in the aftermath of the debate, Romney will face plenty of questions about his agenda, including the one that the president never asked on Wednesday. Romney insisted repeatedly that he does not have a $5 trillion tax-cut plan that would favor the wealthy, although independent analysts have said it would.

If that's not his plan, what is? How much would it cost? And how would he make the math add up? He rebutted Obama's criticism by deflection, not by engagement. He still hasn't said what loopholes and tax expenditures and deductions he would get rid of.

In the hours after the debate, Obama campaign advisers insisted that they would tear into Romney for what he said and didn't say. The president did not make his criticism stick in person. He'll have two more chances to do so in upcoming debates. But the next opportunity will be Vice President Biden's, when he debates GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Thursday in Kentucky. It's unlikely he'll leave the 47-percent issue backstage.

Both sides believe that the contrasts drawn on Wednesday favor their candidates. Obama's team says Romney is on the wrong side of public opinion on Medicare, on dealing with the deficit and on protecting the middle class. The Republican's team argues that Obama is on the wrong side of public opinion in calling for higher taxes, more spending and more regulation. Obama called Romney's economic plan trickle-down; Romney said Obama's plan is "trickle-down government."

Republicans were elated by what happened Wednesday. They knew that a bad performance by Romney might have all but doomed his chances of winning the election. Now they see a race joined again. Stuart Stevens, the campaign's chief strategist and a target of considerable criticism over the past month, looked particularly pleased as he fielded questions from reporters after the debate.

Stevens has argued for months that Obama not taking ownership of his record would be his biggest obstacle to reelection. He said the debate proved that. "I don't think [Obama] had a particularly bad debate," he said. "He has a bad record."

Stevens said polls show a virtual tie nationally and noted that challengers often don't overtake an incumbent until the very end of the campaign. Obama advisers stressed that Romney still has a narrow path through the battleground states to win the 270 electoral votes he needs and they seemed determined to make that part of whatever narrative comes out of Wednesday's exchange.

Democrats were sobered by how the president did during the debate but think that fundamentals still work in his favor. Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Romney's victory was "convincing, but hardly changed the race." He said that the Republican's performance probably would win over some GOP-leaning independents who had been wavering or tilted toward Obama, but that underlying forces will help the president.

"That said," he added, "I think the president will have to be much more passionate about the changes he will bring, and bolder. In our dial tests, his best scores were right at the beginning when he laid out four things he would do. People are still looking for what the candidates will do. Obama will have to show much more."

Devine said the effect of the debate is taking away Democrats' hope that Obama might score a big victory in November and help other party members in down-ballot races. "That huge opening may now be lost if Romney makes up ground or, even worse, if it looks like he will win," he said. "People want progress and to turn the page after 11 years of doubt, and last night Romney looked more like the guy who could and would turn that page for them."

Said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic strategist with ties to organized labor: "Romney is a top-notch debater and the president had an off night. Debates are like speed bumps - you have to slow down to get past them but then you can resume your normal cruising speed. The public is evenly divided, and this is going to be a race to the end. Now it's onto the next [debate], but hopefully last night was a wake-up call to anybody on our side who had grown overconfident or complacent."

It will take days for the impact of the exchange to filter through the electorate. Only then will it become clear whether or how much it changed things. Romney far exceeded expectations, and for now that has made this a different contest.

balzd@washpost.com

For previous columns by Dan Balz, go to postpolitics.com.

Name Blurb Flag true Variable Size Panel Image Panel Image Background Image


LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



647 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 4, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


A Bigger Role on Behalf of the Romney She Knows


BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO, ASHLEY PARKER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 1098 words


LAS VEGAS -- Ann Romney sounded like a seasoned political operative. Backstage at a rally in Iowa recently, she delivered instructions to Renee Fry, a former aide to Mitt Romney who is now campaigning for him: Tell the Bristol-Myers story.

As governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney had negotiated a major deal to persuade Bristol-Myers Squibb to open a factory in the state, luring hundreds of jobs. ''No one would have thought about relocating to Massachusetts before that,'' Mrs. Romney told her. ''Tell them what Mitt can do for the economy.''

Once in the background, more cheerleader than consultant, Mrs. Romney is asserting herself with new force as the campaign enters its final weeks, publicly scolding Republicans who second-guess her husband and privately pushing for ways to recast him in her own terms.

She regularly sits in on high-level strategy sessions, weighs in with candid opinions for her husband and calls senior advisers to share her views, according to campaign aides, who are reluctant to discuss her private conversations.

On the road, Mrs. Romney notes voters' worries, complaints and suggestions, which she passes on to the campaign.

''She is collecting information and suggesting action about it,'' said Ms. Fry, who has campaigned with Mrs. Romney in Iowa and Wisconsin recently.

At a time when some Republican operatives say the Romney campaign is foundering because of the candidate's weaknesses or missteps, his wife of 43 years is a relentlessly upbeat figure inside the Boston headquarters, pushing back against that line of thinking. Her message: the story of the Mitt Romney she knows -- an empathetic man who has cared for suffering families, nurtured women's careers and given up riches to serve the public -- has not reached the electorate.

With her husband reluctant -- or unable -- to tell his own story in a compelling way, she has made the task of humanizing him a personal mission. But it is late in the game, and polls show that the Obama campaign has effectively substituted its own, unflattering version of Mr. Romney.

Mrs. Romney's frustration with the popular image of her husband is at times palpable. During his trip to Europe in August, when he seemed to cast doubt on preparations for the Olympics and suggested that culture explained Palestinian economic woes, Mrs. Romney was so livid about the news media's coverage that she had to be persuaded not to walk to the back of the campaign plane to upbraid reporters, according to multiple aides.

In Iowa last month, she admonished Republicans who question her husband's strategy and performance. ''Stop it,'' she said. ''This is hard.''

Internally, Mrs. Romney insists that the campaign allow Mr. Romney to be himself and that those around him provide positive reinforcement. ''Encourager in chief,'' an aide calls her.

Laraine Wright, a close friend of Mrs. Romney's, put it this way: ''Everyone wants to give them advice, and she said it's very nice, but Mitt is who Mitt is.''

That has led some close to the campaign to suggest that Mrs. Romney's approach might discourage constructive criticism from reaching Mr. Romney, a worry at a time when his campaign is lagging in some swing states, according to recent polls. Two Republican strategists who do not advise Mr. Romney but who are familiar with the workings of his campaign said that Mrs. Romney's defense of her husband's instincts had blunted negative -- but necessary -- feedback.

Campaign aides, though, dismissed that claim as carping from misinformed outsiders.

Mrs. Romney has encouraged those who have worked with Mr. Romney in the past, in the governor's office or at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, to publicly recount their experiences with him. The idea, she has said, is to both familiarize voters with the her husband's softer side and counter claims that his agenda would set women back.

Beth Lindstrom, the secretary of consumer affairs under Mr. Romney in the governor's office, said Mrs. Romney urged these women to discuss how family friendly he was as a boss. Ms. Lindstrom, who had three small children when she went to work for Mr. Romney, has told audiences about how Mr. Romney told her, at their first cabinet meeting, that he his approach was ''family first.''

''I think we all feel frustrated and I'm sure Ann specifically because she sees the fellow that he is and knows his skill set and knows how he is being portrayed as being unfriendly to women and it's just not true,'' Ms. Lindstrom said.

Mrs. Romney has long served as an informal adviser for her husband, a calming presence and a gut-check barometer. She has played those roles since his days as governor, when aides used to invite her to into the office for lunch on days when Mr. Romney was in a dark mood. As Ms. Fry recalled, her presence alone made him forget whatever was bothering him.

Inside the campaign these days, said a top Romney adviser, ''it's very positive, and Ann helps us keep it that way.''

During campaign debates, Mr. Romney routinely looks to his wife after delivering answers to gauge her reactions, sometimes conferring with her during commercial breaks. After Mr. Romney gave Newt Gingrich a drubbing during a primary season debate, Mrs. Romney telegraphed her views in a brief conversation: enough. Mr. Romney had made his point, an adviser recalled.

Her place in the campaign has grown as she hits the trail with her own team of staff members, evolving from occasional stand-in to full-blown campaigner in her own right. On Monday, she read Dr. Seuss' ''One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish'' to a kindergarten class in Henderson, Nev., then spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 at a local convention center. On Tuesday, she held a rally in Denver and sat down for six local television interviews.

At a Las Vegas event on Tuesday, Mrs. Romney was introduced by an old friend, who recalled how Mr. Romney, then a local Mormon leader, all but adopted her family when a daughter became gravely ill. Images of faded photographs of Mr. Romney cradling the girl and a handwritten thank you card flashed on a big screen.

As she took the stage, Mrs. Romney looked relieved, as if somebody had finally captured her husband as she sees him.

''I love the fact that people are standing up and saying this is the Mitt Romney I know,'' she said.

Mrs. Romney acknowledged that her husband does not excel at telling stories. ''He doesn't talk. He does,'' she said to applause. ''You've got to find voters who voted for Obama,'' she told well-wishers along a rope line in Nevada, as she posed for photographs and signed T-shirts. ''We've got to win this.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/us/politics/ann-romney-takes-larger-campaign-role.html


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Ann Romney, greeting supporters Tuesday in Littleton, Colo., has assumed a larger presence on the campaign trial as the presidential race enters its final weeks. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHEW STAVER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A16)
Ann Romney waited for the presidential debate to start onWednesday. ''She is collecting information and suggesting action about it,'' said a former Romney aide. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Mrs. Romney saying goodbye to her husband between campaign events in Florida last month. Right, speaking at the Republican National Convention. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A23)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



648 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 4, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Obama and Romney, in First Debate, Spar Over Fixing the Economy


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1476 words


DENVER -- Mitt Romney on Wednesday accused President Obama of failing to lead the country out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, using the first presidential debate to invigorate his candidacy by presenting himself as an equal who can solve problems Mr. Obama has been unable to.

The president implored Americans to be patient and argued that his policies needed more time to work, warning that changing course would wipe away the economic progress the country is steadily making. The two quarreled aggressively over tax policy, the budget deficit and the role of government, with each man accusing the other of being evasive and misleading voters.

But for all of the anticipation, and with less than five weeks remaining until Election Day, the 90-minute debate unfolded much like a seminar by a business consultant and a college professor. Both men argued that their policies would improve the lives of the middle class, but their discussion often dipped deep into the weeds, and they talked over each other without connecting their ideas to voters.

If Mr. Romney's goal was to show that he could project equal stature to the president, he succeeded, perhaps offering his campaign the lift that Republicans have been seeking. Mr. Obama often stopped short of challenging his rival's specific policies and chose not to invoke some of the same arguments that his campaign has been making against Mr. Romney for months.

At one point, Mr. Romney offered an admonishment, saying, ''Mr. President, you're entitled, as the president, to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts, all right?'' He forcefully engaged Mr. Obama throughout the night, while the president often looked down at his lectern and took notes.

A boisterous campaign, which has played out through dueling rallies and an endless stream of television commercials, took a sober turn as the candidates stood at facing lecterns for the first time. Mr. Obama, who has appeared to take command of the race in most battleground states, seemed to adopt an air of caution throughout the evening that left some of his liberal supporters disappointed in his performance.

''Are we going to double down on the top-down economic policies that helped to get us into this mess,'' he said, ''or do we embrace a new economic patriotism that says, 'America does best when the middle class does best' ''?

For much of the debate, the candidates commandeered the stage, taking control away from the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, as they kept trying to rebut one other. At times, the moderator seemed as if he had walked off the stage, a result of new rules that were intended to allow for a deeper and more freewheeling discussion.

On a basic level it was a clash of two ideologies, the president's Democratic vision of government playing a supporting role in spurring economic growth, and Mr. Romney's Republican vision that government should get out of the way of businesses that know best how to create jobs.

Mr. Romney sought to use his moment before a prime-time audience of tens of millions to escape the corner Mr. Obama and his allies have painted him into, depicting him as an uncompromising adherent to policies that have been tried before. He instead turned the focus on his opponent's record.

''You've been president four years. You've been president four years,'' Mr. Romney said at one point. He ticked through a list of promises he said Mr. Obama had not lived up to, and said, ''Middle-income families are being crushed.''

Neither candidate delivered that knockout blow or devastating line that each side was hoping for. Still, style points went to Mr. Romney, who continually and methodically pressed his critique of Mr. Obama. The president at times acted more as if he were addressing reporters in the Rose Garden than beating back a challenger intent on taking his job.

Throughout the evening, Mr. Romney escaped Mr. Obama's attempts to pin him down on which deductions he would eliminate in his tax proposals.

''At some point,'' Mr. Obama said, ''the American people have to ask themselves: Is the reason Governor Romney is keeping all these plans secret, is it because they're going to be too good? Because middle-class families benefit too much? No.''

Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Romney for his answer to a primary debate question last year in which he joined his fellow Republicans in saying he would not accept a budget deal allowing $1 of tax increases for every $10 in spending cuts. ''Now, if you take such an unbalanced approach,'' Mr. Obama said, ''then that means you are going to be gutting our investments in schools and education.''

Mr. Romney said his position on the tax-for-revenue deal was because of the state of the economy, not necessarily ideology. ''I'm not going to raise taxes on anyone because when the economy's growing slow like this, when we're in recession, you shouldn't raise taxes on anyone,'' he said.

He said his proposals were unlike those of other Republicans because he was combining tax reform with lowered tax rates. ''My plan is not like anything that's been tried before,'' he said. He said he would not support any tax cuts that added to the deficit, in other words, that were not paid for.

The debate, held at Magness Arena on the campus of the University of Denver, was the first of three face-to-face encounters between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. It took place even as voters across the country were already casting early ballots.

All year Democrats have been waiting for Mr. Romney to make a more overt appeal to the sort of moderate voters he needs to win over by highlighting the more centrist positions from his years as Massachusetts governor. And on Wednesday he seemed to highlight his record in ways he had yet to do.

Even as he repeated his plans to repeal the president's health care plan, he happily embraced the plan he pushed into law in Massachusetts -- the basis for the president's -- that is anathema to many in his party.

''I like the way we did it in Massachusetts,'' Mr. Romney said of his health plan. ''We had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together.''

But an argument for bipartisanship animated much of Mr. Romney's message through the night. He said he had worked with Democratic legislators in Massachusetts. And he said that he would do the same thing on his first day in the Oval Office.

The claim drew one of Mr. Obama's sharpest retorts of the night. ''I think Governor Romney's going to have a busy first day,'' he said, ''because he's also going to repeal 'Obamacare,' which will not be very popular among Democrats as you're sitting down with them.''

Mr. Romney pressed Mr. Obama on a provision of his health care overhaul that cut $716 billion from the growth in Medicare, saying that by cutting fees paid to providers it was certain to affect treatment. And he emphasized that his plans for Medicare would not affect current beneficiaries or people close to entering the system.

But Mr. Obama interjected, saying that if ''you're 54 or 55, you might want to listen because this will affect you.'' He said that Mr. Romney's plans to offer subsidies for private insurance would mean ''the traditional Medicare system will collapse.''

The discussion between the candidates often unfolded in a staccato of statistics, making it difficult to follow. The candidates quarreled over subsidies for the oil industry, Medicare cuts, taxes and government spending.

In the opening half of the debate, Mr. Obama sought to link Mr. Romney to former President George W. Bush. For his part, Mr. Obama sought to link himself to the economic policies of former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Romney pushed back against Democrats arguments that he is proposing a form of ''trickle-down'' economics that would benefit the rich and hurt he middle class. He accused Mr. Obama of proposing ''trickle-down government.''

''We know the path that we're taking isn't working, and it's time for a new path,'' Mr. Romney said.

Both campaigns acknowledged that the race is close enough that the first debate could reorder a contest that has recently appeared to be tilting in Mr. Obama's favor, in spite of continued economic hardship throughout the nation and a slower recovery than he promised four years ago. The candidates meet for their second debate on Oct. 16 in New York.

While acrimony has deepened between the rivals, the men smiled broadly as they strode briskly onto the stage Wednesday night and exchanged a hand shake that lingered for several seconds. The president opened his remarks by wishing his wife a happy 20th anniversary and offered her a promise: ''A year from now, we will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.''

Mr. Romney congratulated Mr. Obama and drew laughter from the crowd when he joked: ''I'm sure this was the most romantic place you could imagine -- here with me.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/us/politics/obama-and-romney-hold-first-debate.html


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama criticized ''the top-down economic policies that helped to get us into this mess.'' His rival noted, ''You've been president four years.'' Yet both men maintained a calm, sober air. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A18)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



649 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 4, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Race at Issue for Obama As Right Revives '07 Talk


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS and JIM RUTENBERG


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 23


LENGTH: 1070 words


In the summer of 2007, his campaign for the White House well under way, Senator Barack Obama waded into the minefield of racial politics and accused President George W. Bush of sitting idly by as a ''quiet riot'' simmered in black communities.

The news created a stir. NBC News featured it on its ''Nightly News'' broadcast. The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune wrote about it, and it was mentioned in a New York Times Op-Ed column. The conservative writer and pundit Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment to it on his MSNBC program.

Then the speech largely faded away -- until last month, when someone calling himself ''Sore Throwt'' started e-mailing conservative activists and news media outlets claiming to have a bombshell video that would jolt the presidential election.

On Tuesday, the eve of the first presidential debate between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, Mr. Carlson's current venture, The Daily Caller, a Web site started with financial help from the conservative donor Foster Friess, put the video back in circulation.

And its report brought to the forefront a wave of questions that have long been favorite topics in conservative circles: about Mr. Obama's views on race; his associations with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.; and whether the mainstream media was willfully ignoring embarrassing episodes from Mr. Obama's past.

The video of Mr. Obama's 2007 remarks shows him saying complimentary things about Mr. Wright, questioning whether race was a reason that federal aid was slow to reach New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and speaking in a more distinctly African-American cadence than he normally uses in public addresses. By Wednesday morning, it had mushroomed into a lead story on the network news programs, a dominant theme of cable news coverage and a developing story online.

For conservatives like Mr. Carlson, the episode was complete vindication. Months ago, many Republicans rushed to distance themselves from an aborted plan by another conservative donor, Joe Ricketts, to finance a campaign that would have touched on similar themes, and Democrats dismissed the video this time as old news. Yet with the campaign moving into its final stages, and Republicans struggling to overcome the fallout from a video in which Mr. Romney was secretly taped making disparaging comments about the ''47 percent,'' the Obama video quickly caught fire.

Mr. Carlson and the editors of his Web site, which was founded with $3.5 million in seed money from Mr. Friess, who was a leading backer of Rick Santorum's ''super PAC,'' immediately saw the relevance of the tape to their conservative audience. To them, what Mr. Obama said in the video was a perfect confluence of all their complaints about the way the mainstream media has covered Mr. Obama: credulously and insufficiently.

The Drudge Report picked up word of the news before it broke, alerting readers on Tuesday afternoon that a major scoop was coming. ''The Accent ... The Anger ... The Accusations,'' the headline teased.

After Mr. Carlson posted the article on his Web site, timed for the prime-time Fox News programming lineup, he appeared on the Sean Hannity program on Fox to explain what he had found. More than three million people tuned in, a substantially larger audience than usual. There was the president, speaking in a way that he usually does not in public, telling a black audience, a group of clergy members at Hampton University in Virginia, that the government did not care about them.

The president was using racial tensions to try to divide America into different classes of people, Mr. Carlson argued. And the accent? To him, it was further evidence of the argument that many Obama opponents on the right have been pushing in their writings, talk shows and films for years: We don't really know who this man is.

A conspiracy theory cottage industry has sprung up around the notion that Mr. Obama is somehow foreign, if not by birth than by ideology. Donald Trump breathed new life into a career as a cable news pundit by repeatedly questioning if the president's birth certificate was authentic.

Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative author and filmmaker, has a new movie in theatrical release called ''Obama 2016'' that argues that Mr. Obama's father, a Kenyan, instilled anti-Americanism in his son at an early age.

One of the film's financial backers was Mr. Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, who considered getting behind a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that would have linked Mr. Obama to his former pastor, Mr. Wright, who became a source of embarrassment for the president.

In many ways, Mr. Hannity was an ideal first stop for Mr. Carlson. Throughout the year Mr. Hannity has featured a segment called ''Vetting the President,'' often focusing on foibles from Mr. Obama's past or over his tenure. As Mr. Hannity said in March, ''We call it 'Vetting the President.' Because the mainstream media, they're not going to do it. They helped elect him. They hid a lot of things about his past.''

And after the video's release on The Daily Caller and Mr. Hannity's program, it was the talk of the rest of the conservative news media. ''Clearly race-baiting, clearly angry, and I'm telling you: This is who he is to this day,'' Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience on Wednesday. Mr. Carlson declined to say on Tuesday how he acquired the video, which news networks have had in their libraries since it was shot. He said only that he had received the video in the last few days.

The video had apparently been circulating in conservative circles at least a week. One person contacted about it described receiving an e-mail pitch from someone calling himself Sore Throwt, a pun on Deep Throat, who helped uncover the Watergate scandal.

Sore Throwt wanted to be paid in exchange for handing over the video, this person said, speaking anonymously in order to divulge a conversation he had promised to keep confidential.

Mr. Carlson would not say whether he paid for the tape.

But he scoffed at the notion that he was merely recycling old news. What he thought was most provocative about it -- Mr. Obama's apparent attempt to link race to the slow Katrina recovery effort -- did not, he said, receive coverage at the time, including on his own program. ''We've already seen this? Really? That's untrue,'' he said, objecting to criticisms that the tape offered little new. ''I feel like I'm in an alternative universe.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/us/politics/07-talk-by-obama-resurfaces-renewing-questions-on-race.html


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., President Obama's ex-pastor, whose words stirred controversy.


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



650 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 4, 2012 Thursday


Fact-Checking Obama's 'Kiss' to Wall Street


BYLINE: BEN PROTESS


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 691 words



HIGHLIGHT: The Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, the government's response to the 2008 financial crisis, was designed to be a slap in the face to Wall Street. But Mitt Romney, during the first debate of the presidential campaign, claims it was "the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen."


Did Mitt Romney catch President Obama smooching with Wall Street?

The Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, the Obama administration's response to the 2008 financial crisis, was designed to be a slap in the face to Wall Street after big banks nearly toppled the economy. But Mr. Romney, attacking the president on Wednesday night in their first debate of the campaign season, claimed Dodd-Frank was "the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen."

That argument might seem strange to Wall Street. If Mr. Obama is cozying up to Lloyd C. Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, that is news to them. Most big bank executives find Mr. Obama disengaged, even aloof. And some never forgave the president for his unflattering depiction of them as "fat cats."

As for Dodd-Frank, Wall Street has spent three years - and hundreds of millions of dollars - trying to kill or tame the law. Mr. Dimon, a Democrat who runs JPMorgan Chase, once said new rules stemming from Dodd-Frank "would damage America." (He supports other aspects of the law).

Mr. Romney on Wednesday said he supported some regulation but also called for the repeal of Dodd-Frank. When pressed to explain what would replace the law, the Republican nominee declined to provide specifics.

Despite being one of Mr. Obama's signature accomplishments, Dodd-Frank has played a back seat to health care and broader economic issues on the campaign trail. But the debate on Wednesday brought Dodd-Frank to the forefront.

For his part, Mr. Obama defended the law and attacked an era of deregulation that he said enabled Wall Street recklessness. "Does anyone out there think that the big problem we had is that there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street?" Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Romney countered with a common criticism of Dodd-Frank, that it labels some financial institutions as "systemically important." Mr. Romney called this policy "an enormous boon" for Wall Street because "it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government."

It was this rule that Mr. Romney seemed to interpret as a big kiss to the banks. "I wouldn't designate five banks as too big to fail and give them a blank check."

Mr. Romney's claims echoed the concerns of Republican lawmakers, who say that Dodd-Frank enshrines several banks as so important that the government would need to rescue them in times of trouble. Dodd-Frank, critics say, did little to break up the nation's biggest banks but left small community banks without implicit government backing and fighting for survival.

But that is not the full story.

For one, Democrats note that the "systemically important" brand is actually meant to strike down the perception that some banks are too big to fail. As Mr. Obama said on Wednesday, these firms must produce so-called living wills and face other measures that empower regulators to wind down big banks in an orderly fashion.

Mr. Romney's decision to single out five New York banks is also suspect. The designation applies not only to Wall Street banks but to dozens of insurance companies, conglomerates and other major banks scattered across the country. Politico's Morning Money newsletter on Thursday quoted an anonymous executive as saying, "If he'd named names, it would have been his top five contributors."

Dodd-Frank supporters also argue that the designation of SIFI - systemically important financial institutions - is hardly a wet kiss. It comes with heightened capital requirements and regulatory scrutiny.

Of course, it is not like Wall Street has never been kissed before. The Clinton administration, at the behest of big banks, tossed out Depression era measures like the Glass Steagall Act, which prevented banks from buying insurance companies. And when the banks grew so bloated that they nearly burst in 2008, Congress came to their rescue with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

But is Dodd-Frank the giveaway that Mr. Romney claims? If so, the Obama administration is kissing but not telling.



LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



651 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 4, 2012 Thursday


After the Debate, Campaigns Quickly Release New Ads


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 199 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama and Mitt Romney hope to build on, or move past, their debate performances.


The presidential campaigns quickly released new television commercials on Thursday morning, each hoping to build on - or move past - Wednesday's debate between the candidates, President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Mr. Obama's campaign used footage from the debate showing Mr. Romney denying that he has a $5 trillion tax cut plan.

"Why won't Romney level with us," the ad asks. The ad suggests that it is because Mr. Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class or make massive cuts in order to afford it.

"If we can't trust him here," the ad says, showing a picture of Wednesday's debate stage, "how could we ever trust him here." The scene shifts to a picture of the Oval Office.

Mr. Romney's ad asks the question: "Who will raise taxes on the middle class?"

It cites an "independent, non-partisan study" which concludes that "Barack Obama and the liberals" will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000 per family.

It adds that the study, which was done by the American Enterprise Institute, a leading conservative research group, concluded that Mr. Romney's own tax plan was "not a tax hike on the middle class."

The ad concludes: "Obama and his liberal allies? We can't afford four more years."


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



652 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)


October 4, 2012 Thursday


Presidential Debate Drew More Than 70 Million Viewers


BYLINE: BRIAN STELTER


SECTION: BUSINESS; media


LENGTH: 556 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nielsen, a television measurement company, said that 67.2 million viewers watched on television, but its total did not count any of the millions of people who had access to the debate on computers, tablets or phones.


The first of three presidential debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney reached more than 70 million viewers on Wednesday night.

Nielsen, a television measurement company, said 67.2 million viewers watched on television at home - the highest number for a first debate since 1980. That year, 80.6 million watched the only debate between President Jimmy Carter and the Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan.

A few second- and third-round presidential debates since then have attracted more than 67 million viewers, including the second debate of the 1992 cycle. Nonetheless, Wednesday's totals were surprisingly high by almost any standard.

About 52.4 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2008, according to Nielsen, though that debate was held on a Friday night, typically a lower-rated night of the week. About 62.5 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2004, which similarly featured an incumbent president and a challenger.

Nielsen's total for Wednesday's debate did not count people who watched outside the home (in offices, bars or airports) or who watched in other countries. Nor did not count any of the millions of people who had access to the debate on computers, tablets or phones. CNN.com, for instance, said it recorded 1.2 million live streams of its debate coverage around the world. YouTube, the Web video giant, said its partners had "millions of live-streamed views of the debates," but declined to release specific numbers.

Of the 11 traditional channels that televised the debate and subscribed to Nielsen ratings, ABC was the most-watched, with almost 11.3 million viewers during the commercial-free debate, Nielsen said. NBC and CBS were close behind, with 11.1 million for NBC and 10.6 million for CBS.

Fox News Channel was as big as any broadcaster, with about 10.4 million viewers during the debate (up from 8.2 million in 2008 and 9.6 million in 2004). The Fox broadcast network attracted about 6.9 million; CNN, 6 million; and MSNBC, 4.7 million. (Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all skew toward older viewers, but interestingly, CNN had a surge of 18- to 34-year-old viewers for the debate - nearly 1.5 million, versus 882,000 for Fox News and 772,000 for MSNBC.)

More than 2.6 million Spanish-language viewers watched on Univision, and another 248,000 watched on Telemundo, according to Nielsen. (Telemundo showed the debate on a tape delay.) The lowest-rated of all the channels with the face-off was Current TV, Al Gore's fledgling liberal cable channel, which had about 100,000 viewers.

Another measurement company, Rentrak, found that the total audience for the debate was remarkably stable from 9 to 10:30 p.m. The company, which tracks viewership behavior in one million homes, found a slight uptick at 10 p.m.

TiVo, which tracks the rewinding behavior of digital video recorder owners, found that the most-rewound moment of the debate came at 9:27, when Mr. Romney mentioned his plan to cut funding from PBS (and gave Big Bird a shout-out). About 250,000 viewers watched the debate on PBS.



LOAD-DATE: October 5, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



653 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 4, 2012 Thursday


Biden Gives Rebuttal to Romney's Debate Remarks


BYLINE: TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 669 words



HIGHLIGHT: In Iowa, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivered the kind of impassioned response to Mitt Romney that many Democrats said they wished they had heard from President Obama. 


COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- Criticizing Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate, his voice now indignant, now deeply sarcastic, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivered the kind of impassioned response to the Republican nominee on Thursday that many Democrats said they wished they had heard from President Obama.

Mr. Biden addressed some 600 supporters here after speaking briefly to reporters, who asked for his impressions of Mr. Romney's performance.

"Last night we found out he doesn't have a $5 trillion tax cut,'' Mr. Biden said. "I guess he outsourced that to China or something.''

He defended Mr. Obama's low affect and refusal to engage Mr. Romney more aggressively. "I think the president did well; he was presidential,'' he said. "As time goes on, meaning days, it's going to become pretty clear that Governor Romney has either changed a number of his positions or didn't remember some of his positions. I think at the end of the day we have two more debates coming up, or the president does, and I feel very good about it.''

Anticipating his own debate with Representative Paul D. Ryan one week away on Oct. 11, Mr. Biden said he had been studying Mr. Ryan's positions to avoid making any factual errors describing them. "All debates are tough. But I'm looking forward to it, I really am,'' he said.

At his rally, Mr. Biden delivered scorching responses to positions Mr. Romney espoused on Wednesday night on Medicare, deficit reduction and education. He accused Mr. Romney, often sarcastically, of backing away from earlier positions. He said he was "stunned" to hear Mr. Romney say he planned no cuts to education.

"Yo!'' Mr. Biden said, pretending to address Mr. Romney. "That came as a real surprise to your Republican colleagues in the House, man.''

(The House-passed budget written by Mr. Ryan calls for deep cuts to social programs without specifying amounts. The White House has calculated that if the cuts are applied equally across all programs, they will chop about 20 percent from each one.)

At another point, Mr. Biden dropped his voice to a deep baritone meant to mock Mr. Romney, saying, "I don't have a plan to cut $5 trillion.''

He laid out the Democrats' version of how the various tax cuts Mr. Romney proposes - including a 20 percent reduction in income taxes, eliminating inheritance taxes and extending all the Bush-era tax cuts - add up to $5 trillion over a decade.

He contrasted the Republicans' economic plans with what he called the administration's "balanced" proposal to include spending cuts with higher taxes on the wealthy by allowing the Bush-era cuts on the top income bracket expire.

"We're gonna ask - yes - we're gonna ask the wealthy to pay more,'' he said. "My heart breaks.''

"You know the phrase they always use?'' he added, again lowering his voice, this time in imitation of a scary-sounding television attack ad. "Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by $1 trillion.''

"Guess what,'' he said. "Yes, we do, in one regard. We want to let that trillion-dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the superwealthy. That's not a tax raise. That's called fairness where I come from.''

The Romney-Ryan campaign jumped on the remark, highlighting the "yes, we do" phrase to accuse the president of baldly embracing tax hikes. An image of a yes-we-do T-shirt was circulated by a campaign spokesman, and Mr. Ryan planned to highlight the remark at a joint rally with Mr. Romney in Virginia late Thursday.

But the administration's proposal to increase revenues by some $1 trillion is fairly old news. The White House and Congressional Democrats have made no secret that is the estimated figure to be raised by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest earners to expire next year, which has been part of Mr. Obama's agenda for two years.



LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



654 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 4, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION


Dems' ad blitz puts GOP on spot;
Pro-Obama TV ads top 92,000 after convention


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, and Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A


LENGTH: 762 words


President Obama is outspending Mitt Romney on advertising in almost every battleground state, putting pressure on Romney to unleash a late spending surge.

Since the Democratic Party's convention ended Sept. 8, Obama and his supporters have put 32% more ads on television than Romney and his allies, a Wesleyan Media Project analysis out Wednesday shows.

Obama and the super PAC supporting him, Priorities USA, aired 92,104 ads in the three weeks following the conventions, compared with 69,426 ads from the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee and six outside groups.

Obama has the advantage in 14 of the top 15 markets, including cities in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Colorado. Romney leads only in Las Vegas, thanks to nearly 3,000 ads run on his behalf by outside groups.

The disparity is "astonishing," says Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, a research group at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Conn., that tracks political television advertising.

"It's very surprising to me that any campaign would give such an advantage to another candidate in a competitive presidential cycle, particularly given the early indications that Romney and his outside interest groups would be dominating the airwaves," Fowler said.

The gap is big enough the Romney campaign sought to reassure donors with a memo Tuesday that promised Romney would "spend as much in paid advertising, direct mail and field operations in the next five weeks as we have spent " since April. Through September, Romney spent $108 million on advertising, according to data from SMG/Delta, a Republican media buying firm. To match that ad buy between now and the election, the Romney camp would have to spend more than $21 million each week.

"Everything we want to do will be funded," Romney political director Rich Beeson said in an interview. Obama's strategists, he said, "are running a campaign the same way they run the country -- just throw money at it and hope that it solves the problem."

An ad push now from Romney would already have missed the start of early voting in two swing states, Iowa and Ohio. Nor can Romney count on significant additional coordinated spending with the Republican National Committee. Campaign-finance laws allow $22 million in coordinated ad expenditures between a candidate and party, and the RNC has already spent about $20 million.

In a presidential contest covered around the clock by news media, advertising doesn't drive the entire narrative of a race, says Rex Elsass, a Republican strategist in Ohio. Even so, Obama's heavy advertising allowed him to seize on Romney's remarks about the 47% of Americans who pay no income tax and use it pummel the GOP nominee on the air.

"They had the cash to capitalize on it," Elsass said.

Romney has ramped up advertising in Ohio, where he spent than $3 million this week, SMG/Delta said.

Part of Obama's financial strength now stems from his early strategy of courting small donors who can be tapped for repeated donations, said Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine. About 34% of the money Obama has raised from individuals, or $147 million, came from donors who had given him $200 or less, an analysis by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute shows. Romney took in 18% of his total, or $39.5million, from small donors.

"Even though there is an unprecedented amount of outside money in the race, Obama has had the resources to match it," Corrado said. "The reality (Romney's aides) face is that they need to marshal their resources to make sure they have money in the last four weeks," he said.

Relying on outside groups for advertising support comes at a premium: Only candidates are entitled to a TV station's lowest ad rates.

When millions are being spent, the outside-group premium adds up: Since April, Romney's campaign and 10 Republican groups have spent $233 million on TV ads compared with $195 million by Obama and three groups supporting him. The GOP got 371,249 pro-Romney ads for their money. The Democratic spending, most of it from the Obama campaign, purchased 403,678 ads, about 9% more for the money, according to the Wesleyan analysis.

The Romney campaign paid $800 this week for a spot during Live with Kelly & Michael on WBNS, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, public records show. The GOP-aligned super PAC American Crossroads, however, paid $1,200 for an ad on the same show in the same time slot.

"One of the things they may not have counted on is the fact that the outside money does not go as far as candidate money," Fowler said.


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



655 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
She the People


October 4, 2012 Thursday 9:54 PM EST


When kids say, 'I'll try,' moms hear 'Not happening' - and that's how Obama sounded


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


LENGTH: 933 words


Okay, who thinks President Obama should have taken his wife out for their anniversary instead of debating Mitt Romney?

With or without the sound on, Romney dominated the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night. He came off as ready, reasonable, and crucially, not even a little bit of a doofus. 

The president, on the other hand, looked like he would rather have been anywhere else, and perhaps in an effort to avoid one of those "You're likable enough, Hillary," outbreaks of flaming smarty-pants-itis, let his rival get away with a lot: He was even unaggressive in challenging that tried-and-untrue talking point about how Obama has raided Medicare to pay for "Obamacare." And the same goes for Romney's out-of-nowhere assertion that he wants to keep parts of Dodd-Frank and lower the boom on Wall Street.

While Romney earned an "A" for affect, Obama looked down, looked away and sometimes even nodded encouragingly   as Romney finally kicked off his general election campaign, suddenly presenting himself as a uniter and friend of the working stiff.

But worst in my book was the president's weak mewl of a closing statement: "You know, four years ago, I said that I'm not a perfect man and I wouldn't be a perfect president. And that's probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I've kept. But I also promised that I'd fight every single day on behalf of the American people...I've kept that promise and if you'll vote for me, then I promise I'll fight just as hard in a second term."

The unenergetic way he said that he'd fight communicated just the opposite and reminded me of how sometimes my kids sound, telling me they'll try to accomplish whatever chore I have in store. When they put it that way, I am well and truly warned that they have little to no intention of actually following through. And the president's general lack of get-up-and-go played right into the Republican argument that he's a well-intentioned sort who hasn't gotten it done - and despite his best efforts, won't.

When Obama argued that the Romney tax plan doesn't add up and isn't equitable, the governor called him a fibber in the sunniest possible way: "I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case. Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it."

Obama, on the other hand, seemed at a loss about how to bat down whoppers without being disagreeable, and when he did lash out, it was at poor Jim Lehrer, who'd just told him his two minutes were up: "I had five seconds before you interrupted me." Boo-hoo, but that's not on the list of things presidents get to cry over.

The moderator so let Romney control the debate that if elected, the Republican might want to rethink his plan to defund Big Bird's network. Why, in a campaign in which there's been such a lack of specificity, the longtime PBS anchor lobbed a big-picture question about the role of government near the debate's end was a stumper. And he even broke one of Julia Child's cardinal rules for cooking and life - "You should never apologize at the table. People will think, 'Yes, it's really not so good," - when he said that with time too rapidly running out, "I'm not going to...say your answers have been too long or I've done a poor job." 

One Republican who may not have loved every moment of Romney's performance is Indiana Senate candidate and tea party favorite Richard Mourdock, whose Democratic rival, Joe Donnelly, has been running a series of hilarious and highly effective ads against what he calls Mourdock's "my way or the highway" approach to working across the aisle. Romney likely earned a cameo in a future Donnelly ad when he said, "my experience as a governor is if I come in and lay down a piece of legislation and say, "It's my way or the highway," I don't get a lot done."

The "zingers" Team Romney promised did not really materialize, unless you count this one: "Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts." Nor, alas, did the president answer Romney's assertion that "the place you put your money just makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is," with a reference to Romney's accounts in the Caymans.

Perhaps the boldest moment of the night came when Romney cast himself as eager to crack down on the financial sector. At every campaign stop, he rails against regulation in general and Dodd-Frank in particular. In Denver, however, he sounded like a different man: "We're not going to get rid of all regulation. You have to have regulation. And there are some parts of Dodd-Frank that make all the sense in the world." 

So will conservatives be inflamed by this unrecognizably moderate rhetoric? On the contrary; this once, they surely agree with Nancy Pelosi's bottom-line advice to Democratic House candidates: "Just win, baby."

The overall impression was that these two men are not as far apart as advertised, but only one had had his energy drink, and the other was hoping not to spend his next wedding anniversary in front of millions of people.

  Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's 'She the People' blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



656 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 4, 2012 Thursday 9:54 PM EST


Paul Ryan's congressional opponent outraises him in the third quarter;
Ryan's not vulnerable in his House race, but his Democratic opponent outraised him in the third quarter.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 606 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

President Obama and the curse of the first reelection debate (video)

How the debate changed things (and how it didn't)

Simpson-Bowles and Dodd-Frank, explained

The first presidential debate, by the numbers

Why was President Obama so bad?

Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states

What Google can tell us about the first debate - in 4 charts

Tim Kaine raises $4.5 million in the third quarter, outpacing George Allen

Six reasons Mitt Romney won the first debate

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama raised $150 million in September, but the Obama campaign says that is not accurate. A campaign official says it had a record month, but that the $150 million figure isn't right. 

* Rep. Paul Ryan's (R) Democratic opponent in Wisconsin's 1st District outraised him during the third quarter, $770,000 to $567,000. Ryan, who is simultaneously running for reelection to the House and vice president, finished the period with over $4 million in the bank, while the Zerban campaign didn't immediately provide its cash on hand number (it had about $527,000 on hand as of late July). Ryan is not considered vulnerable. 

* Obama went on offense at a campaign rally a day after his debate with Mitt Romney, saying the Republican nominee misrepresented his positions because "he does not want to be held accountable."

* Vice President Biden offered an optimistic take on Obama's Wednesday debate performance, even as the emerging narrative is that Romney turned in a better performance. "I think the president did well. He was presidential," Biden said before a campaign appearance in Iowa. "You just don't ever know what game, what positions Gov. Romney's going to come with." 

* The Obama campaign is out with a new ad attacking Romney with footage from the debate. The ad calls into question Romney's claim that he is not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. The Romney campaign, meanwhile, released a new ad arguing Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. 

* Al Gore suggested that Denver's altitude might have affected Obama's debate performance. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Rep Todd Akin (R-Mo.) claimed the highest-paid staffer in his congressional office is a woman, but according to Legistorm, Communications Director Steve Taylor is Akin's highest paid staffer. Akin also failed to report 10 years worth of of Missouri legislative pension income on his congressional disclosure report. He called it an "unintentional oversight."

* Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) leads former governor Linda Lingle (R) 54 percent to 37 percent in the Hawaii Senate race, according to a Benenson Strategy Group poll conducted Sept. 18-20 for the Hirono campaign. 

* Ann Romney will co-host ABC's "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, Oct. 10, filling in for anchor Robin Roberts.

* A Quinnipiac University poll of the Connecticut Senate race shows Republican nominee Linda McMahon running about even with Rep. Chris Murphy (D). McMahon is at 48 percent and Murphy is at 47 percent in the survey. The race hasn't moved much from late August, when Quinnipiac showed McMahon up 49 percent to 46 percent over Murphy. 

THE FIX MIX:

The presidential debate. Autotuned.

With Aaron Blake 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



657 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 4, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Obama's lead raises questions about GOP super PACs


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A section; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 750 words


Have conservative groups bungled their chance to help defeat Barack Obama?

Fueled with tens of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions, a network of GOP super PACs and nonprofit groups began the year with heady talk of bringing down President Obama with a ceaseless barrage of attack ads.

But judging from the latest polls, the effort hasn't gone very well. Obama is holding a narrow lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney nationally and appears to be widening his advantage in key swing states such as Ohio and Virginia, according to mainstream pollsters.

The trend has prompted second-guessing among many political strategists and observers, who question why conservative groups weren't more unified in their ad messages over the summer and fault Romney's campaign for failing to build a positive impression of the candidate among voters.

Charlie Cook, the veteran political prognosticator, has been harshly critical of the pro-Romney strategy, saying it was "inexplicable" that the campaign and its supporters did not put forward a clear biographical portrait of the GOP candidate over the summer.

"The Obama campaign and allies ripped Romney apart in swing-state advertising, and with no Teflon coating to protect their candidate, it stuck like Velcro," Cook wrote in a recent assessment.

Those behind the bulk of the conservative ads beg to disagree, saying they were successful in keeping the president from using ample campaign funds and the power of the incumbency to open up a wide lead. In other words, they say that Romney could be much further behind - a la Bob Dole in 1996 - if not for the onslaught of conservative ads attacking Obama's record on jobs and the economy.

"Our goal was to make sure that the president's numbers with regards to the economy stayed low, stayed where he could be beat," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, which has run more than $33 million in ads related to the presidential race this cycle. "When you look at where he stands today, I think it's obvious that strategy has worked."

The hopes of some conservatives seemed loftier earlier in the year, however, when the possibilities of super PAC fundraising seemed limitless and Obama's approval ratings were weighed down by a struggling economy. The chances of Republican dominance on the airwaves were buoyed further when the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee outraised Obama and the Democrats from May to July.

But the latest numbers show that in terms of dollars spent, the ad wars have been largely a draw: The pro-Romney side has spent about $223 million on broadcast ads since April, compared with $209 million for Obama, according to tracking estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG. The bulk of the burden on the Republican side has been carried by AFP, American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and other independent groups.

Despite spending less, the Obama campaign and its key super PAC ally, Priorities USA Action, appear to have outmaneuvered their opponents in battleground states by picking cheaper advertising slots and, since early September, taking advantage of ad discounts provided to candidates. New data released Wednesday by the Wesleyan Media Project showed that Obama and Priorities aired more than 92,000 spots in key markets Sept. 9-30 - a 31 percent volume advantage over the entire Republican side, which spent about the same amount of money.

"Obama has been very, very efficient," CMAG President Ken Goldstein said.

Democratic strategists also argue that they have been aided by a disjointed strategy among GOP groups, who seemed to pull in and out of swing states willy-nilly and did little to make up for downturns in spending by the Romney campaign at crucial moments. Ad messages have ranged widely from the economy to energy policy to foreign policy.

Bill Burton, spokesman for Priorities USA Action, said GOP groups mounted "a series of erratic, incoherent and often contradictory attacks."

"Our singular focus is illustrating how Romney's agenda benefits the wealthiest at the expense of middle-class families," Burton said.

American Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio disagrees, saying that Republican groups have done a good job countering Obama's financial advantage over Romney.

"President Obama spent $173 million between May and August trying to knock Mitt Romney out early with negative TV ads, and conservative groups largely balanced that out by coordinating their expenditures over that time period," he said.

eggend@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



658 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 4, 2012 Thursday 6:53 PM EST


Six reasons Mitt Romney won the first debate;
The debate lacked an a-ha moment, but there are plenty of reasons Romney is being judged the winner.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 931 words


Most everyone agrees: Mitt Romney won the first debate of the 2012 presidential election on Wednesday.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll released after the debate showed 67 percent of viewers thought Romney won, while just 25 percent said the same of President Obama. And a CBS poll showed 46 percent of undecided voters said Romney won, compared to 22 percent who said Obama won.

While Romney's workman-like performance may have lacked one single big moment, there were a lot of reasons he came out ahead.

Below, we expound upon six of them:

1. He controlled the format: For better or worse, moderator Jim Lehrer largely let the candidates sort out the debate themselves, essentially broaching broad topics and letting the candidates duke it out on their own terms - with almost-endless rebuttals. This format favored Romney. Romney's campaign went into the debate with an attack mindset (as most candidates who are behind do), and by allowing all those rebuttals, Lehrer gave Romney a chance to execute. He did. Obama wasn't as focused on attacking, which works less well when there is so much back-and-forth.

WATCH: The first presidential debate in two minutes

2. Obama seemed frazzled: He didn't have an Al-Gore-sighs moment, but Obama was clearly not having a good time on stage. His head was down when Romney was talking, his responses were halting at times, he often nodded (as if showing approval) or smirked when Romney was talking, and he even conceded some points to Romney on issues like deficit reduction and not being a "perfect" president. None of these were by themselves huge moments (as Gore's sigh was), but the totality suggested a candidate who wasn't terribly comfortable. And he wasn't.

3. The politics of preemption: Romney knew going into the debate that he was going to be attacked for raising taxes on the middle class (according to an oft-cited study) and favoring the wealthy, so what he did was preemptively assure that he would not raise taxes on the middle class, repeating that over and over again and suggesting that it's Obama who would raise taxes on the middle class. He also made a point to emphasize the poor (think: "I'm not concerned about the very poor"). By setting the terms of the tax cut debate, Romney offset the gains that Obama might have been able to make on a class issue that polls suggest the president is winning.

4. Obama didn't get his big talking points in: If you would have told us before the debate that Obama would mention the auto bailout and Osama bin Laden only once and wouldn't mention Bain Capital or Romney's "47 percent" comments at all, we would have told you you were crazy. Yet that's exactly what happened. Obama seemed predisposed with not engaging too much with Romney, but the debate was all about engaging with one another, and Obama didn't even register the biggest hits on Romney.

5. The expectations were low: There's a reason the campaigns spend so much time lowering expectations for the debate; expectations matter. And polls showed that, going into the debate, the American public, by a large margin, expected Obama to win. With the bar relatively low for Romney, it was that much easier to clear. That's not to say Romney didn't have a good debate. He did. But candidates will always be graded on a curve, and Romney beat the curve.

6. Romney avoided a stumble: Romney's campaign has been colored by the occasional gaffe which shows the candidate to be out of touch or just plain awkward. There were a couple iffy moments on that count (Big Bird, anyone?), but the GOP nominee's performance was largely gaffe-free. Without a "47 percent" or "I'm not concerned about the very poor" moment, Romney allowed for the post-debate analysis to focus on other things, which is what he needs.

Romney's growing Latino problem: Two new polls released Wednesday showed Obama taking at least 70 percent of the Latino vote - reinforcing a troubling trend line for Republicans.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll showed Obama ahead of Romney 70 percent to 26 percent, while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed him ahead 71 percent to 21 percent. Either result would be a disaster for the GOP.

Even as Latinos have fallen out of love with Obama, they have completely stuck by him. If they do vote 70 percent for the incumbent, it will top even their 2008 level of support for the president (67 percent). 

Fixbits:

Romney will deliver a major foreign policy speech in Virginia next week.

Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) Senate campaign isn't backing off its candidate's 2008 claim that some doctors perform abortions on women who aren't pregnant.

A private poll conducted by Mass Insight shows Elizabeth Warren (D) at 48 percent and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) at 44 percent.

A new ad from national Democrats hits Senate candidate Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on women's issues.

An automated Democratic poll from Public Policy Polling shows Democrat Richard Carmona at 45 percent and Flake at 43 percent.

New polls conducted by the University of New Hampshire show the state's two congressmen - Republicans Frank Guinta and Charlie Bass - trailing by nine and in a virtual tie, respectively.

Must-reads:

"Blue State or Red? Look at the Fingers" - Celia McGee, New York Times

"Sen. Brown faults work Warren did for Dow Chemical" - Steve LeBlanc, AP

"Tester and Rehberg Fight Over Outsider Label in Montana" - Jack Healy, New York Times

"Welcome to Akin-land" - David Weigel, Slate


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



659 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 4, 2012 Thursday 2:29 PM EST


Ad Watch: Mitt Romney promises 12 million jobs;
"Let me tell you how I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't."


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 98 words


Mitt Romney, "12 million jobs" 

What it says: "Let me tell you how I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't."

What it means: Coming off his performance in Wednesday's debate, Mitt Romney is staying on offense - with a message targeted to the middle, not the base.

Fact Checker: "The number is less impressive than it sounds. This pledge amounts to an average of 250,000 jobs a month, a far cry from the 500,000 jobs a month that Romney claimed would be created in a 'normal recovery.'"


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



660 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 4, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


Obama's lead raises questions about GOP super PACs


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 749 words


Have conservative groups bungled their chance to help defeat Barack Obama?

Fueled with tens of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions, a network of GOP super PACs and nonprofit groups began the year with heady talk of bringing down President Obama with a ceaseless barrage of attack ads.

But judging from the latest polls, the effort hasn't gone very well. Obama is holding a narrow lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney nationally and appears to be widening his advantage in key swing states such as Ohio and Virginia, according to mainstream pollsters.

The trend has prompted second-guessing among many political strategists and observers, who question why conservative groups weren't more unified in their ad messages over the summer and fault Romney's campaign for failing to build a positive impression of the candidate among voters.

Charlie Cook, the veteran political prognosticator, has been harshly critical of the pro-Romney strategy, saying it was "inexplicable" that the campaign and its supporters did not put forward a clear biographical portrait of the GOP candidate over the summer.

"The Obama campaign and allies ripped Romney apart in swing-state advertising, and with no Teflon coating to protect their candidate, it stuck like Velcro," Cook wrote in a recent assessment.

Those behind the bulk of the conservative ads beg to disagree, saying they were successful in keeping the president from using ample campaign funds and the power of the incumbency to open up a wide lead. In other words, they say that Romney could be much further behind - a la Bob Dole in 1996 - if not for the onslaught of conservative ads attacking Obama's record on jobs and the economy.

"Our goal was to make sure that the president's numbers with regards to the economy stayed low, stayed where he could be beat," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, which has run more than $33 million in ads related to the presidential race this cycle. "When you look at where he stands today, I think it's obvious that strategy has worked."

The hopes of some conservatives seemed loftier earlier in the year, however, when the possibilities of super PAC fundraising seemed limitless and Obama's approval ratings were weighed down by a struggling economy. The chances of Republican dominance on the airwaves were buoyed further when the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee outraised Obama and the Democrats from May to July.

But the latest numbers show that in terms of dollars spent, the ad wars have been largely a draw: The pro-Romney side has spent about $223 million on broadcast ads since April, compared with $209 million for Obama, according to tracking estimates from Kantar Media/CMAG. The bulk of the burden on the Republican side has been carried by AFP, American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and other independent groups.

Despite spending less, the Obama campaign and its key super PAC ally, Priorities USA Action, appear to have outmaneuvered their opponents in battleground states by picking cheaper advertising slots and, since early September, taking advantage of ad discounts provided to candidates. New data released Wednesday by the Wesleyan Media Project showed that Obama and Priorities aired more than 92,000 spots in key markets Sept. 9-30 - a 31 percent volume advantage over the entire Republican side, which spent about the same amount of money.

"Obama has been very, very efficient," CMAG President Ken Goldstein said.

Democratic strategists also argue that they have been aided by a disjointed strategy among GOP groups, who seemed to pull in and out of swing states willy-nilly and did little to make up for downturns in spending by the Romney campaign at crucial moments. Ad messages have ranged widely from the economy to energy policy to foreign policy.

Bill Burton, spokesman for Priorities USA Action, said GOP groups mounted "a series of erratic, incoherent and often contradictory attacks."

"Our singular focus is illustrating how Romney's agenda benefits the wealthiest at the expense of middle-class families," Burton said.

American Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio disagrees, saying that Republican groups have done a good job countering Obama's financial advantage over Romney.

"President Obama spent $173 million between May and August trying to knock Mitt Romney out early with negative TV ads, and conservative groups largely balanced that out by coordinating their expenditures over that time period," he said.

eggend@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



661 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 3, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


In 90-Minute Debate, 2 Candidates Stand On Equal Footing


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 13


LENGTH: 1058 words


DENVER -- President Obama will have the first word at the presidential debate. Mitt Romney will have the last word. But even before they step onto the stage and shake hands here Wednesday evening, voters across the country are already starting to have the final word.

With a little more than a month left in the race, and early voting under way in 35 states, that is the reality facing Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney as they meet for the first of three face-to-face debates. While Republicans concede time may be fading for Mr. Romney to change the dynamic of the campaign, Democrats know it has not faded yet and both men face risks -- and rewards -- for their performances.

A presidential race between an incumbent and a challenger, which has played out for most of the year in biting television commercials and fiery speeches, suddenly narrows to a pair of candidates standing side-by-side starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time. For 90 minutes, the rivals will be essentially equal, creating what Mr. Romney's advisers believe is a critical opportunity to make a move in the race.

There will be no rigid time limits, buzzers or cheering that often threatened to turn the Republican primary debates into a recurring political game show. The debate will be divided into six segments of 15 minutes, with ample opportunity for robust exchanges and a level of specificity that both sides have often sought to avoid.

As Mr. Romney took a lunch break on Tuesday, he told reporters, ''I'm getting there,'' when asked whether he was ready for one of the biggest moments of his campaign. In Nevada, where Mr. Obama practiced for the debate, he went for a quick tour of the Hoover Dam.

Here is a look at a few things to watch -- in style and in substance -- as the debate unfolds at the University of Denver, here in the battleground state of Colorado, for the first of three encounters between the president and Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

RIVALS The two men may spend considerable time talking and thinking about each other, but they know each other only from afar. They have not appeared on the same stage in nearly eight years, when they both spoke at the winter Gridiron Dinner in 2004, a white-tie gathering that is a staple on the social calendar of official Washington.

While advisers to Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney said that the two men seem to have little genuine appreciation for each other, it is unlikely their true feelings will be on display. The president, who has yet to live down an offhand remark from a debate in 2008 when he told Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton she was merely ''likable enough,'' has been warned by his aides to avoid being smug.

Mr. Romney may have a bit more latitude in this regard as he tries to show Republicans -- and undecided voters -- that he can forcefully challenge the president and regain command of the race.

TOPICS The debate is to focus on domestic issues, with a particular emphasis on the economy. There is no shortage of material, considering the national unemployment rate is at 8.1 percent.

But even though the rationale of Mr. Romney's candidacy is rooted in his business experience and his promise to revive the economy, advisers said he would try to broaden the argument against Mr. Obama's job performance by raising questions about how his administration handled the attack on a diplomatic mission last month in Libya that killed four Americans.

The challenge for both men in the debate, to be moderated by Jim Lehrer, will be to enliven the conversation with fresh details, rather than offering a line-by-line replay of the campaign so far. There are many potential flash points, including: health care (the national plan signed into law by the president and the Massachusetts law signed by Mr. Romney); the nation's fiscal crisis and solutions for reaching a comprehensive deficit reduction deal, including the willingness to raise taxes and overhauling the nation's tax code.

STAGECRAFT A coin toss determines speaking order: Mr. Obama opens and Mr. Romney closes. Their respective campaign representatives have spent days on details as small as how many family members can take the stage after the debate, a sign that almost nothing will be left to chance.

Yet the chemistry between the two candidates cannot be rehearsed and their interactions could be just as important as the answers to the debate questions. Mr. Romney has practiced being ''respectfully aggressive,'' a senior adviser said, with a goal of pleasing Republicans who believe he has been too passive. At the same time, the objective is to not turn off independent voters, women or others who may be disappointed with Mr. Obama's policies but still like him.

Mr. Romney's goal is not focused on tearing down the president, aides said, but rather to use the audience of tens of millions of American to show that he can be trusted to improve their lives.

''In my view it's not so much winning and losing -- it's about something bigger than that,'' Mr. Romney told supporters here Monday night. ''These debates are an opportunity for each of us to describe a pathway forward.''

The president, who polls show has developed a lead in several battleground states, has been instructed by aides to use humor and his wide smile to fend off attempts to be drawn into the fray. He is aiming to be confident and humble about his first term, one adviser said, in hopes of avoiding coming across as ''arrogant or dismissive.''

Both candidates will come to the debate armed with well-practiced one-liners, the moments they hope will become sound bites that will shape the narrative in the days to come. It will be telling how long they wait before starting to unload them and how they address one another from the outset of the debate.

OLD VS. NEW The general election debates, which pushed presidential campaigns into the television age a half-century ago, are now facing a new test. The rise of social media has already reshaped the race, raising questions of whether the audience will match the 52.8 million viewers who tuned into the first debate between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain four years ago.

But this year, on the eve of the first debate, Ohio became the second battleground state on Tuesday to open its doors to early voting. And by the time the third debate takes place on Oct. 22, tens of millions of Americans will have already voted.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/politics/in-debate-obama-and-romney-stand-on-equal-footing.html


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Workers in Denver on Tuesday preparing for the first presidential debate. It will have no rigid time limits, buzzers or cheering. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES) GRAPHICS: Squaring Off, With Body Language: Peggy Hackney, an analyst working with the New York University Movement Lab, has examined the body language exhibited by President Obama and Mitt Romney in a number of speeches and debates. Here is a look at some of the signature gestures that they use. (Sources: Motion capture and gesture recognition by Chris Bregler, Damon Ciarelli at the N.Y.U. Movement Lab)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



662 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 3, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Obama Camp Outspending Romney On TV Ads


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEREMY W. PETERS; Jim Rutenberg reported from Denver, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 960 words


DENVER -- For every five commercials Mitt Romney and his allies ran here in this vital swing state in the last two weeks of September, President Obama and Democrats ran seven, accusing Mr. Romney of having a ''tough luck'' attitude toward the middle class and asserting that Mr. Obama has brought the economy back from the brink.

In Florida, the disparity was greater. The number of pro-Obama ads outnumbered pro-Romney ads by almost 50 percent -- some 13,000 of them accusing Mr. Romney of outsourcing jobs to China, trying to gut Medicare and hiding his tax returns from the public.

The story was the same in most of most of the other battlegrounds. In Ohio and in Iowa, in Norfolk, Va., and on the Boston stations that feed New Hampshire, Mr. Obama out-advertised his rival after the parties' nominating conventions, according to data compiled by the political advertising monitoring firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

Mr. Obama's continued advantage on the airwaves, which counters Democratic predictions that he would be far outgunned by Mr. Romney and his allied ''super PACS'' by now, may help explain why polls in most of the competitive states have shifted in his direction over the last month.

On top of the problems Mr. Romney created for himself with his ''47 percent'' comments, Mr. Obama's ad onslaught appears to have helped the president gain an advantage on issues like Medicare while eating into what had seemed be Mr. Romney's advantage on the economy. It also drove home the image of Mr. Romney as out of touch with the middle class that Democrats spent all summer advancing.

While pressing his advantage on broadcast television, Mr. Obama has spent large amounts to put his message in front of women who watch soap operas and talk shows like ''The View,'' and in front of the young viewers who watch shows like ''Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.''

And on cable, where Mr. Obama ran commercials unopposed for most of the year -- and where even now he is regularly on twice the number of channels as Mr. Romney -- he has put his commercials in front of the men who watch ESPN and the African-Americans who watch BET.

The dynamic in the political air wars has led to worry among Republican strategists outside the campaign that Mr. Romney's team has simply been outmatched by Mr. Obama's in its approach to advertising and the way it goes about buying ad time on television.

Unlike the Obama campaign, which uses a large outside time-buying firm with about two dozen people working on the account, the Romney campaign, in an effort to save money, buys time with what is effectively an in-house operation that has at times seemed to rest on the shoulders of a single deputy, several people who have dealt with it say.

Mr. Romney's aides dismissed the notion, saying that they have the people they need but that many of their advertising decisions were forced by a temporary lack of money.

It is unclear is how lasting Mr. Obama's advantage will be. Mr. Romney's campaign has bet heavily on the idea that it can sway voters in the closing weeks of the race. After holding back after its convention at the end of August, it is now planning much heavier spending after the first debate on Wednesday. Already, the campaign has been quietly increasing its ad spending, with a new $1 million advertising purchase in Iowa, a $2 million purchase in Nevada and several new reservations on cable.

''With the money that Governor Romney's been able to raise -- with Ryan raising it too -- we're able to get a more even footing with them in terms of ad buys, and that will help in the long term,'' said Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney.

To further help, the conservative group American Crossroads said on Tuesday it would put an additional $11 million into ads in swing states in coming weeks.

But, members of both parties said, the question will be whether the late surge in Republican advertising will be enough to undo the damage to Mr. Romney's standing from the early barrage of commercials from Mr. Obama and his supporting super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

Mr. Obama's campaign believed all along that it was essential to try to define Mr. Romney early, in part because early voting means many voters will cast their ballots weeks before the campaign concludes.

''The cash advantage over the summer was huge -- it had a huge impact for them,'' Mr. Gillespie said of Mr. Obama's team.

All told, from the moment Mr. Romney emerged as the likely Republican nominee in April through most of September, Mr. Obama ran nearly triple the number of commercials he did, according to Kantar, about 347,000, nearly 270,000 negative. Mr. Romney ran about 121,000, more than 99,000 of them negative.

Outside groups have gone a long way toward making up the difference. When those groups are taken into account, the Democrats ran 35,000 more commercials than Republicans.

The two exceptions for Mr. Romney have been North Carolina, the swing state where Mr. Romney has performed best, and Wisconsin, which several outside groups hope to turn in Mr. Romney's favor.

Commercial counts are a better guide to the advertising war than sheer dollars. Democrats say that Republicans have spent more on advertisements than they have since April 1, $351 million to $303 million. But presidential campaigns can buy ads at lower rates than outside political groups can. The Obama campaign also saved money by reserving time far in advance, securing lower rates.

Still, not all ads have the same impact. A single Super Bowl ad can reach more people than dozens of late-night commercials.

But a look at the advertising purchases of the campaigns and the super PACS shows that Mr. Obama and the Democrats outstripping their opponents at various times of day, including in prime time, in various markets.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/politics/obama-outspending-romney-on-tv-ads.html


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



663 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 3, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


A Glimmer in the Vast Wasteland


BYLINE: By NEWTON N. MINOW.

Newton N. Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963, is the author, with Craig L. LaMay, of ''Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and Promising Future.''


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 27


LENGTH: 922 words


Chicago

ON Wednesday night, President Obama and Mitt Romney will meet in Denver for our nation's 28th televised presidential debate. The first was in 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon squared off in Chicago. After he was elected, Mr. Kennedy told me he would not have not have won without the four debates that year.

The debates are an institution now, and among the most watched television events in America. They are one place in the modern campaign -- perhaps the only place -- where the voter is treated with respect. They are the one time when the major candidates appear together side by side under conditions they do not control. They are a relief from the nasty commercials that dominate the campaign, fed by donations that are effectively unlimited and anonymous. Broadcasters provide the television time for the debates, without commercials, as a rare public service.

I have been privileged to participate in some form in all 27 presidential and 8 vice presidential debates so far. In 1960, I helped my boss, the former Illinois governor and presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson, persuade Congress to exempt debates from the equal-time law, making it possible for broadcasters to cover them without having to include every candidate for the presidency, no matter how marginal. (Congress failed to provide the same exemption in 1964, 1968 and 1972, so there were no debates those years.) After the Federal Communications Commission acted to exempt the debates from the equal-time law, the League of Women Voters revived the debates, in 1976, and asked me to help.

Critics have sometimes charged that the debates, and their format and substance, are controlled by the two major parties and campaigns. This was once true. In 1980, for example, the negotiations between the League of Women Voters and two skilled Texas political hands -- James A. Baker III for the Republicans and Robert S. Strauss for the Democrats -- reached an impasse. That's when Jim Baker looked at me and said, ''Newt, excuse me, I have to go to the men's room.'' Two minutes later, Bob Strauss similarly excused himself. About 10 minutes later, they came back together with handwritten notes on the back of an envelope and told us, ''Here's the way it's going to be.'' At that time, the debates were still a fragile institution. We had no leverage to compel the candidates to participate, so we accepted their compromise.

Eventually, this led to a showdown: In 1987, the parties established the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan nonprofit organization, to organize the debates, and the following year, the League of Women Voters withdrew its sponsorship. (I serve on the commission.)

Once derided as a creature of the parties, the commission has gradually become independent of them. In 2004, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry tried to force us to accept a 32-page ''memorandum of understanding'' setting out debate details; we refused, and they backed down. In 2008, Senator John McCain asked for a postponement of the first debate, citing the turmoil in the financial markets. We said we would hold it as scheduled, and he agreed to participate as planned.

This year, each of the 90-minute presidential debates will be moderated by a single individual (on Wednesday night, Jim Lehrer), not a panel. The first and third debates will be divided into six 15-minute segments. Each segment will open with a question, followed by two minutes for each candidate, with the balance of time for informal discussion. (The second presidential debate will be a town-hall-style discussion.)

We hope the new format will provide for focused, extended discussion and be entirely different from the disappointing primary and caucus debates, where we saw moderators preening for the camera, demanding yes-or-no answers, asking candidates to raise their hands to respond to questions, and forcing candidates to shout to be heard. We even observed media handlers urging the audience to boo, applaud and jeer.

Sadly, the marriage of television and politics in our country has been mostly a history of disappointment. In 1952, television stations -- which are licensed by the F.C.C. to serve the public interest -- began selling commercials to political campaigns. Other democracies have rejected this idea, and instead provide public service time to candidates during campaign periods. Over the next 60 years, more and more political commercials flooded the airwaves, forcing candidates to raise more and more money. Many of the slurs and slogans in these commercials -- which are often truth-free -- are now paid for by ''super PACs'' and secretive 501(c)(4) groups. I believe it is unconscionable that candidates for public office have to buy access to the airwaves -- which the public itself owns -- to talk to the public.

The debates are one of the few features of our political campaigns that are still admired throughout the world. Candidate debates are still new in most democratic countries, even in Western Europe. Britain, often held up as a model for how to hold a proper election, only in 2010 began to have televised live debates among the party leaders vying to be prime minister.

Let me suggest that after you watch the debate on Wednesday night, you turn off your television set and do your best to avoid the spin that will follow. Talk about what you saw and heard with your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers. You are smarter than the spinners. It's your decision that matters on Nov. 6, not theirs.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/opinion/a-glimmer-in-the-vast-wasteland-of-television.html


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY CARDON WEBB)


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



664 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 3, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Ads Attack Wall Street Ties, No Matter How Flimsy


BYLINE: By PETER LATTMAN


SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEALBOOK; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1344 words


Wall Street has taken a beating this election season. Yet what is considered to be Wall Street may be surprising.

Take Keith J. Rothfus, a Republican candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania. A lawyer at a small firm, he specializes in drafting software-licensing agreements. While unglamorous, it helps pay the bills.

Among the clients he has represented is Bank of New York Mellon, which has a large presence in western Pennsylvania. Two commercials backed by Democratic groups are attacking Mr. Rothfus's relationship with his banking client.

"Millionaire Wall Street lawyer Keith Rothfus will fit right in in Washington," said the narrator of one of the ads. The spot shows a plunging stock market and a grim-looking Mr. Rothfus entering what looks to be a bank. Over ominous music, the narrator goes on: "As a wealthy attorney, Keith Rothfus represented a Wall Street bank that received a bailout from taxpayers."

In an interview, Mr. Rothfus called the ad "deceitful, shameful and outrageous." He said that while BNY Mellon took bailout funds, his work for the company - most of which predates Bank of New York's 2006 takeover of Mellon Financial of Pittsburgh - had no connection to the financial crisis.

"I'm a Stanwix Street lawyer, not a Wall Street lawyer," Mr. Rothfus said, referring to his firm's downtown Pittsburgh address. "I visited Wall Street once, in 1980, as a tourist at the New York Stock Exchange. If I'm a Wall Street lawyer, then the 7,500 people that work for Mellon bank in western Pennsylvania are fast-money traders who charter private jets to the Hamptons on weekends."

As campaigns enter their final month, a number of candidates are flooding the airwaves with advertisements demonizing Wall Street. From the presidential race to local Congressional contests, from Montana to New Mexico, candidates - both Democrats and Republicans - are relentlessly attacking their opponents by linking them to bankers and bailouts, no matter how tenuous the connection.

"Candidates are bashing each other over the heads for being in Wall Street's back pocket," said Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. "Wall Street is this campaign season's punching bag, and it's bipartisan and it's escalating."

In the turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, Heather A. Wilson, then a Republican congresswoman from New Mexico, voted in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which provided rescue funds to banks. Four years later, Ms. Wilson - a former Air Force officer - is running for the United States Senate. An opponent's ad assails what it characterizes as her deep ties to Wall Street.

"As a congresswoman from New Mexico, it wasn't Heather Wilson's job to represent Wall Street banks," said the narrator in a spot paid for by a liberal super PAC. The ad shows a series of dark, shadowy Manhattan office towers - those of Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. "But she voted time and again to give them special tax breaks, and then voted to bail them out."

In Montana, the incumbent, Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, is facing a fierce challenge from the state's sole congressman, Denny Rehberg. Mr. Tester, who has received substantial money from executives in the financial industry, has boasted in television spots that he "opposed all of those Wall Street bailouts." Mr. Rehberg also voted against the bank bailout. So instead of focusing on TARP, ads pummel Mr. Rehberg for his longtime support for privatizing Social Security - in other words, putting retirement funds in the hands of Wall Street money managers.

One of the ads features the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and an electronic ticker showing shares in a nose dive. The narration features voices of market commentators: "A wild ride on Wall Street ... the biggest point drop ... a precipitous fall ... these guys have been gambling ... gambling ... bad bets ... they didn't know when to back away. A gamble. That's Congressman Denny Rehberg's plan for Social Security."

Josh Mandel, the Republican Ohio state treasurer running for United State Senate as a Washington outsider, has an ad that goes after members of Congress on both sides of the aisle for supporting the bailout.

"Every Democrat and every Republican who took our tax dollars and used them to bail out Wall Street banks was dead wrong," Mr. Mandel says in the spot, speaking in an angry tone to a group of factory workers. "It was fiscally irresponsible. It was morally wrong."

The presidential candidates have also criticized one another for their Wall Street ties. Ads for President Obama have homed in on Mr. Romney's leadership of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he started. By focusing on private equity - a specific pocket of the financial industry - Mr. Obama has largely avoided a broader critique of Wall Street, where he has raised millions of dollars. On Monday, the Obama campaign announced a new ad that links Bain to a company outsourced American jobs.

Republicans, meanwhile, depict Mr. Obama as a pawn of the financial services industry. One advertisement from the conservative organization American Future Fund titled "Obama's Wall Street" highlights Mr. Obama's vote in favor of TARP when he was a United States senator running for president and says that his cabinet is full of financiers. Another, called "Justice for Sale," suggests that campaign contributions from the banking industry explain why the administration has not prosecuted more executives relating to their conduct during the financial crisis.

"Under Obama, Wall Street keeps winning, and Obama keeps taking their cash," the narrator says. "Tell Obama to stop protecting his Wall Street donors."

Mr. Rothfus, the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, is locked in a tight race with his opponent, the Democratic incumbent Mark S. Critz. He has countered the attack ads with humorous "Keith Rothfus is a regular guy" 30-second spots. In one, he is shown gardening in his modest front yard, driving his kids around town and repairing his daughter's bicycle.

In response, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has produced an ad that starts, "Regular guy? Hardly. Keith Rothfus is a millionaire attorney for a Wall Street bank." Banner headlines of the BNY Mellon's $3 billion bailout run across the screen.

Mr. Rothfus, who lives in Sewickley, Pa., with his wife and six children, has worked as a corporate lawyer since graduating from Notre Dame Law School in 1980. For the last 15 years he has practiced on and off at Yukevich, Marchetti, Liekar & Zangrilli, a 12-lawyer firm. He earned about $125,000 last year. His assignments for BNY Mellon constitute a tiny portion of his overall practice, which focuses on small- and medium-size businesses.

"I've never done anything close to securities work for Mellon, never came close to those C.D.O.'s," said Mr. Rothfus, referring to collateralized debt obligations, the complex mortgage instruments that contributed to the near collapse of the financial system. "I've never even done an I.P.O."

Spokesmen for organizations behind the attack ads against Mr. Rothfus - the Democratic House Majority PAC and Afscme - said that they stood behind the ads.

Despite Mr. Rothfus's modest salary - top Wall Street lawyers earn substantial seven-figure salaries - the millionaire epithet is accurate. That comes courtesy of his wife, the daughter of a successful Pittsburgh businessman. Based on his most recent financial disclosure, Mr. Rothfus's total assets, including those of his wife, range from $5.1 million to $13.9 million.

With clean-cut looks and wire-rimmed glasses, Mr. Rothfus does look the part of a button-down Wall Street lawyer. But he is quick to point out that he favors Brooks Brothers off-the-rack suits instead of the bespoke variety and prefers Land's End neckwear to Hermès ties.

"There were certain individuals on Wall Street who were reckless and betrayed our trust," he said. "But I wasn't one of them."

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/ads-attack-wall-st-ties-no-matter-how-flimsy/


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Keith Rothfus, a Republican, said his opponent's commercial was ''deceitful.'' (B1)
Keith Rothfus, on phone, said his legal specialty was drafting software licensing agreements. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF SWENSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B5)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



665 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Learning Network)


October 3, 2012 Wednesday


Watching the First Presidential Debate: What Is Your Reaction?


BYLINE: KATHERINE SCHULTEN and MICHAEL GONCHAR


SECTION: EDUCATION


LENGTH: 496 words



HIGHLIGHT: Students: Tell us your reaction to this first debate. What were the most memorable moments? Do you think it "moved the needle" on either campaign?


"A presidential race between an incumbent and a challenger, which has played out for most of the year in biting television commercials and fiery speeches, suddenly narrows to a pair of candidates standing side-by-side starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time," writes The Times's Jeff Zeleny.

As you watch the debates on Wednesday night, tell us what you think. Did anything that was said "move the needle" on either campaign? We'll be moderating comments live, and choosing our favorite as "Comments of the Moment."

In "In 90-Minute Debate, 2 Candidates Stand on Equal Footing," Mr. Zeleny notes some things to look for as you watch:

- The challenge for both men in the debate, to be moderated by Jim Lehrer, will be to enliven the conversation with fresh details, rather than offering a line-by-line replay of the campaign so far. There are many potential flash points, including: health care;... the nation's fiscal crisis and solutions for reaching a comprehensive deficit reduction deal.

-Yet the chemistry between the two candidates cannot be rehearsed and their interactions could be just as important as the answers to the debate questions. Mr. Romney has practiced being "respectfully aggressive," a senior adviser said, with a goal of pleasing Republicans who believe he has been too passive.

- Both candidates will come to the debate armed with well-practiced one-liners, the moments they hope will become sound bites that will shape the narrative in the days to come. It will be telling how long they wait before starting to unload them and how they address one another from the outset of the debate.

- The rise of social media has already reshaped the race, raising questions of whether the audience will match the 52.8 million viewers who tuned into the first debate between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain four years ago.

Students: Tell us how you're reacting to this first debate, both during it and afterward.


Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Teachers: We ask a new Student Opinion question each weekday, and leave most open to comment indefinitely. Feel free to assign your students a class code of some kind to append to their names so you can see their responses.

We also have a large, and growing, collection of resources for Election 2012 including lessons, quizzes, crosswords and much more.



LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



666 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)


October 3, 2012 Wednesday


The Breakfast Meeting: Debate No. 1 Arrives, and NBC Likes Three New Shows


BYLINE: BILL BRINK


SECTION: BUSINESS; media


LENGTH: 476 words



HIGHLIGHT: Also, President Obama outspends Mr. Romney in TV ads in battleground states, and a 2007 video of Mr. Obama is re-examined on Fox News.


The media world's focus is solidly locked on Denver as Wednesday's first presidential debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, approaches. Jeff Zeleny provides a guide for viewersin The Times, and writes that there will be six segments of 15 minutes, "with ample opportunity for robust exchanges and a level of specificity that both sides have often sought to avoid.''




The Drudge Report generated a wave of interest promoting a video that Tucker Carlson discussed with Sean Hannity on Fox News, billing it as a racially charged speech by President Obama in 2007. Mr. Carlson acknowledged that he had reported on the video back in 2007, but he disagreed that it was an old story,the Web site Mediate reported. He said the media back then focused on Mr. Obama's prepared remarks, and not the ad-libs, which Mr. Carlson said contained divisive remarks.

NBC, which hasn't had much to celebrate lately in terms of prime-time television, moved quickly to reaffirm some early fall season success, Bill Carter writes for The Times. The network renewed three new shows for a full season of episodes: the drama "Revolution,'' and two comedies, "Go On,'' starring Matthew Perry, and "The New Normal,'' about a gay couple and a surrogate mother. The three had done particularly well in terms of delayed viewing, with their ratings increasing significantly through DVR viewings after they were initially shown on television.


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



667 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 3, 2012 Wednesday


Priorities USA Action Pulls Ads From Florida and Wisconsin


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 237 words



HIGHLIGHT: The pro-Obama "super PAC" that has spent millions of dollars attacking Mitt Romney in ads is pulling commercials from Florida and Wisconsin, part of what the group says is a realignment of its advertising campaign.


The pro-Obama "super PAC" that has spent millions of dollars attacking Mitt Romney in ads is pulling commercials from Florida and Wisconsin, part of what the group says is a realignment of its advertising campaign.

The cancellations by Priorities USA Action, coupled with new purchases of television time in other key swing states, indicate where Democratic strategists think the presidential race may and may not be competitive with a month left to Election Day.

President Obama was always polling strongly in Wisconsin, so the need for him to have a strong television presence advertising there was less crucial.

But Priorities, which has been pulling in more money than its pro-Romney counterpart recently and will continue to aggressively fund-raise through much of October, is also going up on the air in states where the polls are much tighter, like Nevada, which is a first.

Bill Burton, a senior strategist for the group, said Wednesday that Priorities would also be buying more time in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia in the coming days.

According to preliminary advertising totals, Priorities moved $4.5 million out of Florida and Wisconsin markets. But the group remains on the air in some markets, including Orlando, West Palm Beach and Green Bay.

"We are not leaving any states," Mr. Burton said. "Based on our extensive polling and targeting data, in some states we are shifting efforts into some key markets."


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



668 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 3, 2012 Wednesday


Polls Show Voters Divided Ahead of Debate


BYLINE: ALLISON KOPICKI


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 564 words



HIGHLIGHT: Several new polls measure support for the candidates and their policies.


Before the first debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Wednesday night, a fresh batch of polls measuring support for the candidates and their policies shows a closely divided nation.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll released Tuesday showed voters were divided over which candidate was better prepared to create jobs and improve the economy, by far the most important issue in deciding how to vote, and a central topic in the debate tonight. However, more voters said that Mr. Obama is better prepared to lead the country for the next four years.

In the overall match-up, the NBC/WSJ poll showed Mr. Obama with a 3-point advantage among likely voters over Mr. Romney, a difference within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In Quinnipiac University's national poll, also released Tuesday, about 9 in 10 voters said they planned to watch the debates, but nearly the same number said they did not expect the candidates to say anything that would change their minds. The poll showed Mr. Obama with 49 percent of support among likely voters, compared with 45 percent for Mr. Romney.

In Ohio, Mr. Obama has an 8-point lead among likely voters, according to a new NBC/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll, driven in part by strong support among women and young voters, and a small edge among independents.

In the swing states of Florida and Virginia, the race is more competitive, according to the NBC/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll. In Virginia, Mr. Obama received the backing of 48 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent who support Mr. Romney. In Florida, the race is nearly even. Voters in Virginia and Florida were divided over which candidate would better handle the economy, but Mr. Obama held a slim advantage on foreign policy.

The Heartland Monitor Poll, conducted by Allstate and National Journal, found that nearly half of Americans said they were better off because Mr. Obama had won the 2008 election, while 4 in 10 said they would have been better off under someone else. Three-quarters said they've been able to get ahead financially over the course of their lives, but about the same number said it was harder to do so today than in previous generations.

While nearly 6 in 10 said the economy will improve over the next 12 months, Americans were divided over which candidate has the experience and skills needed to steer the economy. More said that Mr. Obama would better support policies that would benefit people like themselves, as well as promote opportunities for all Americans and for future generations.

Conducted nearly two weeks ago, the Heartland poll found 50 percent of likely voters supporting Mr. Obama and 43 percent supporting Mr. Romney.

In a new national survey of Hispanics conducted by CNN/ORC, Latinos said that Mr. Obama would do better on a number of issues by a large margin over Mr. Romney, including the economy (40 points), immigration (54 points) and education (57 points). Seven in 10 likely Hispanic voters said they would support Mr. Obama, compared with about a quarter who said they would support Mr. Romney.



LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



669 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 3, 2012 Wednesday


First Presidential Debate Live Blog


BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 12961 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Wednesday night in Denver in the first of three presidential debates. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern.


President Obama and Mitt Romney square off on Wednesday night in Denver in the first of three presidential debates. Live coverage begins at 8 p.m. eastern. The Times will be providing updates and analysis on our live dashboard. You can also follow along on Twitter @thecaucus, or follow our list of Times journalists covering the debate.

12:13 A.M. | That's a Wrap

The first presidential debate has ended and the candidates are going home. The Caucus live blog has ended, too. You can rewatch the entire debate, read the transcript and scroll through our fact check feature, and be sure come back to The Caucus and the rest of NYTimes.com for continuing coverage.

And don't forget to download the Election 2012 iPhone app, which smartly combines our coverage with the best from political news sites, Twitter and blogs from around the Web.

- The New York Times

11:36 P.M. | No Kind Words for Obama at His Friendliest Network

The hosts on the cable news channel friendliest to President Obama, MSNBC, groped to find anything friendly to say after the debate on Wednesday night.

Liberal hosts like Ed Schultz were taken aback by what they thought was a weak performance by Mr. Obama. Mr. Schultz, who earlier said he was stunned that Mr. Obama was "off his game," later threw up his arms and asked, "Where was the president tonight?"

His exasperated colleague Chris Matthews said, "Obama should watch MSNBC." Mr. Matthews said he felt that Mr. Obama went into the debate "disarmed" and suggested that he would learn something by watching his show, "Hardball," and MSNBC's other programs.

"He would learn something about this debate," Mr. Matthews said. "There's a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it's been held? Here on this network is where we're having the debate. We have our knives out. We go after the people and the facts. What was he doing tonight? He went in there disarmed!"

- Brian Stelter

11:28 P.M. | Fact Check: Romney's 12 Million Jobs

Mr. Romney promised to create 12 million jobs over the next four years if he is elected president. That is actually about as many jobs as the economy is already expected to create, according to some economic forecasters.

In its semiannual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. Moody's Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said that he expected the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected, under the assumption that whoever wins will "reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceiling without major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability."

Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, has not developed explicit forecasts that go through the end of 2016, but has said that he expects an average job growth of just under 150,000 a month from now through the end of 2013.

Given those expectations for the start of the next presidential term, he said that Mr. Romney's promise of job growth averaging 250,000 a month over the next four years "would be quite a good outcome."

Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office's latest long-term economic forecast, released in August, estimated that employment would grow by just 8.3 million from the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2017, the dates of the next presidential term.

That C.B.O. forecast implies that Mr. Romney would be promising an extra two million jobs, or a 40 percent bonus from what is already expected.

By law, though, the Congressional Budget Office must base its projections on the laws that are on the books rather than on what Congress is expected to do. That means that the office's forecast assumes the "fiscal cliff" - with its sharp tax increases and deep spending cuts - materializes at the end of this year. Most economists do not believe Congress will allow this to happen.

The Congressional Budget Office's jobs numbers would probably look stronger if they likewise assumed Congress does not allow the country to go over the cliff.

- Catherine Rampell

11:20 P.M. | Fact Check: Medicare Cost Control Board

Listing his objections to the new health care law, Mr. Romney said: "It puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea."

Mr. Romney was referring to a Medicare cost control board that would be created by the 2010 law. The stated purpose of the new panel, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, is to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending." Spending cuts recommended by the 15-member board would take effect automatically unless Congress voted to block or change them.

Mr. Obama defended the board, which he described as "a group of health care experts, doctors, etc., to figure out how can we reduce the cost of care in the system over all."

The House voted in March to abolish the board, but the Senate has not acted on the measure. Mr. Obama has said the board "'will help reduce the rate of Medicare cost growth responsibly while protecting beneficiaries."

Under the 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act, the board cannot make recommendations to "ration health care," raise revenues or increase premiums, deductibles or co-payments for Medicare
beneficiaries.

Republicans say the board will inevitably try to save money by cutting Medicare payments to doctors, who would then be less willing to treat Medicare patients.

While the board will focus on Medicare, it is also supposed to make "advisory recommendations" to the president and Congress on how to slow the growth of national health spending in non-federal health care programs and in the private sector.

- Robert Pear

11:14 P.M. | Obama Campaign Says Romney More Assertive

Was President Obama surprisingly flat?

Even Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for the president, acknowledged that Mr. Romney won the debate on style points, saying so in an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama has a reputation for being professorial to a fault. During the four years of his presidency, Mr. Obama has often gotten lost in the weeds during town hall meetings or at White House press conferences.

The president who showed up at the debate was similar to the one who Americans have seen day-in and day-out for the last several years.

Chatter on cable networks and Twitter seemed to agree with Ms. Cutter, saying that Mr. Romney was much more aggressive and animated than the president throughout the debate.

That kind of snap judgement sometimes conflicts with the more thoughtful reaction of the viewing public in the days ahead.

But if Mr. Romney is viewed as the aggressor in the days ahead, it will put more pressure on Mr. Obama to bring more energy and more fight to the remaining two debates later this month.

Ms. Cutter argued in the brief CNN interview that style points are not what matters. She said the president effectively communicated his plans to the many people who were watching who might not have been paying much attention in the past months.

But for a campaign that is not used to conceding anything, the concession on style had to be unwelcome.

- Michael D. Shear

11:09 P.M. | Fact Check: Financial Aid Funding

Mr. Romney said he would not cut federal financial aid to college students, as the Obama campaign has charged, though his campaign has called the system fiscally unsustainable.

"I'm not going to cut education funding," including grants for college, Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Obama has more than doubled the size of the Pell Grant program, which provides aid to low- and middle-income students. Mr. Romney has not said explicitly that he would cut the program, but his campaign says the expansion is unsustainable. The governor's position paper on education says he would "refocus Pell Grants dollars on the students who need them most," suggesting that fewer people would qualify. Democrats also interpret the budget plan of his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, to mean a steep cut in the size of the program.

The Obama camp also points to Mr. Romney's position that he would allow banks bank into the federal student loan system as evidence that he would cut Pell Grants. Mr. Obama eliminated the banks' role as middlemen servicing the loans, saving billions of dollars in fees - money that is helping pay for the Pell expansion.

- Richard P&#233;rez-Pe&#241;a

10:56 P.M. | What Didn't Come Up in the Debate

After 90 minutes, one of the most surprising things about the s debate is what DIDN'T come up.

Here's a partial list:

* The "47 percent." Mr. Obama did not raise the comments that Mr. Romney made, or even refer in an oblique way to the idea that the Republican candidate wouldn't represent everyone.

* Mr. Romney's taxes. After all the talk about Mr. Romney's personal wealth on the campaign trail - remember the Cayman Islands? - it never came up once.

* Bain Capital. Likewise, the president didn't attack Mr. Romney's record as a "vulture capitalist" as some of the Republican candidates did during the primaries.

* Libya. Despite some talk about how Mr. Romney wanted to attack the president's handling of the attacks in Libya, it never came up.

* Immigration and crime. Despite a focus on domestic policy, the issues of immigration and crime never came up. Perhaps they will in another debate.

* Gas prices. This summer, there was a time when gas prices flared as a political issue on the campaign trail. But except for a few mentions of clean energy and coal, there was little mention of the issue that hits people's pocketbooks.

* The Supreme Court. It's an issue for the base of both parties - who will control the appointment of new justices during the next four years. Neither candidate raised the issue.

- Michael D. Shear

10:54 P.M. | Fact-Check: Massachusetts Schools Ranking

Mr. Romney said repeatedly that Massachusetts has the top-ranked schools in the country.

Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a large national standardized test, The Daily Beast ranked Massachusetts at the top. The American Legislative Exchange Council likewise gave Massachusetts the top spot. Not all rankings agree, however. , behind Maryland.

In Massachusetts, by the way, 83.3 percent of high school students graduate on time. Wisconsin, Vermont, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, New Jersey and New Hampshire had better records on that front as of the 2008-9 school year, according to the United States Department of Education.

- Catherine Rampell

10:49 P.M. | Voters' Voices: One Debate In, Not Much Change

Ms. Gardner and Ms. Jernigan just got back from taking a break outside. They both felt frustrated at the end of the debate, despite Mr. Obama's calling it "terrific" in his closing statement.

"I was really kind of hoping Romney would say some stuff that I'd understand, as far as what his plans are," Ms. Jernigan said. "And it sounds more like flippin' rhetoric. And I don't feel that this has clarified anything for me."

"This has basically gone just the way I feared it would," she said.

Toward the end, Ms. Gardner, a homemaker, said: "I felt that Obama lost some of his passion. This time, when he was speaking, he just didn't have that. He seemed kind of tired. Maybe he was just having an off day."

Both women are still strong Obama supporters, despite what they thought of his performance.

Mr. Jernigan found Mr. Romney condescending, especially to the host. "He dismissed the rules of the debate, and particularly Jim Lehrer. That's the thing I took away from this. If anything, it confirmed the opinion I had coming into this. That's not leadership. That's being a bull in a china shop."

Dodd-Frank. Simpson-Bowles. So many numbers.

"I don't know the specifics of these things, so some of it didn't mean a lot to me," said Mr. Gardner, the independent voter who hosted the viewing party. "Like I said before we started, I hate the, 'I'm going to repeal what you did and do something that's better!' Who doesn't want to hear that? Basically nothing changed for me."

Mr. Gardner is still leaning toward Mr. Obama.

- Susan Saulny

10:37 P.M. | Fact Check: Did Half of Green Companies Fail?

A number of readers, including Patty Freeman-Lynde from Athens, Ga., asked about Mr. Romney's charge that half the companies invested in under the president's green energy stimulus have gone out of business.

That is a gross overstatement. Of nearly three dozen recipients of loans under the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program, only three are currently in bankruptcy, although several others are facing financial difficulties.

Mr. Romney also said that many of the companies that received such loans were supported by campaign contributors. George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign, was an investor in Solyndra, the failed solar panel maker, but there are also examples of Republican and Democratic campaign contributors who invested in companies supported by the loan guarantee program.

The former official chosen by the White House to audit the program earlier this year, Herbert M. Allison Jr., gave Mr. Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee $52,500 this year, according to The Associated Press.

- John M. Broder

10:37 P.M. | Fact Check: Education Cuts

The candidates traded a series of charges on education, including whether Mr. Romney's tax cuts would lead to lower government support for public education. Mr. Obama said the House budget authored by Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, would cut "the education budget up to 20 percent."

Mr. Romney rejected the charge. "I'm not going to cut education funding," he said. "I don't have a plan to cut education funding."

But in the past Mr. Romney has said he would do just that.

In a speech to donors in Florida in the spring overheard by reporters, Mr. Romney said he would either merge the federal Education Department with another agency "or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller."

The House budget that Mr. Ryan authored and Mr. Romney has said he largely supports includes large cuts to federal programs, but does not specify how they would be distributed across the federal government. The White House, which vehemently opposed the budget, calculated that if the cuts were distributed evenly across departments and programs, it would mean eliminating 38,000 teachers and aides for poor children in 2014 and 27,000 special education teachers and support staff. In addition, 200,000 children would be dropped from Head Start and other early education programs.

- Trip Gabriel

10:35 P.M. | Fact Check: 'Borrow Money From Your Parents'

Mr. Obama said of his opponent that "when he tells a student you should borrow money from your parents to go to college," it calls into question whether Mr. Romney realizes that some people "don't have that option."

The president's statement, to which Mr. Romney did not reply directly, is based on an interpretation of a less-than-clear statement by Mr. Romney last April. Mr. Romney exhorted students: "Take a risk. Get the education. Borrow money if you have to from your parents. Start a business."

The syntax left his meaning unclear; the Romney campaign later said the governor's reference to borrowing from parents referred to starting a business, not paying for college.

But an Obama ad using video of that speech omitted the reference to starting a business, making it seem as if Mr. Romney was talking about college.

- Richard P&#233;rez-Pe&#241;a

10:31 P.M. | On TV, Candidate Close-Ups Belie Interactions

The debate may have provided more direct back-and-forth between the two candidates than almost any other presidential face-off in modern history.

But - at least on CNN - it was hard to tell what kind of interaction there was. The network showed only a split screen of the two men from the chest up.

The cameras showed each of the two men looking to the side slightly. And when the other one was talking, each man grinned a bit or looked to the side.

But there were very few wide shots that would show the two men actually standing at the lecterns and facing each other.

- Michael D. Shear

10:28 P.M. | Very Different Views of Government's Role

After getting down in the weeds of health care policy, Jim Lehrer, the moderator, took the candidates to 30,000 feet - asking about their broad views about the role of government in American life.

Mr. Obama said the "genius" of America is that the government can do things to create "ladders of opportunity" for people.

"If all Americans are getting opportunity, were going to be better off," Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Romney countered by saying that the role of government is to "promote and protect" the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

He said that leads to not cutting the military, maintaining a commitment to religious tolerance and opposing a "trickle-down government approach" that he said was not working.

"The proof of that is 23 million people out of work," he said.

"The proof of that is one out of six people in poverty," he said.

- Michael D. Shear

10:27 P.M. | Reader Question: Tax Breaks for Moving Overseas

Q: Do corporations actually get a tax break for relocating manufacturing overseas? - johng158, New York City

Annie Lowrey: It is true. The tax code currently does allow companies to deduct certain expenses when they move operations overseas. As part of its plan to aid the manufacturing sector and promote job growth, the Obama administration has proposed ending this deduction, and giving tax credits to companies moving jobs back to the United States.

- The New York Times

10:25 P.M. | Fact Check: Government 'Takeover' of Health Care

Mr. Romney said in the debate that Mr. Obama's health care overhaul would allow the federal government to "take over health care," an assertion rejected by the president.

The 2010 health care law clearly expands the role of the federal government. But it also builds on the foundation of private health insurance, providing subsidies for millions of low- and moderate-income people to buy private insurance.

Under the law, close to 30 million Americans are expected to gain health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many of them would receive insurance through the expansion of Medicaid. The federal government will initially pay the entire cost of Medicaid coverage for newly eligible beneficiaries and would never pay less than 90 percent.

In addition, the federal government would subsidize the purchase of private insurance for millions of people with incomes up to four times the poverty level (up to $92,200 for a family of four). Private insurers would thus have many new customers.

Projections by the nonpartisan office of the actuary at the Department of Health and Human Services show that federal, state and local government health spending will account for nearly 50 percent of all health spending in the United States by 2021, up from 46 percent in 2011. The federal share of all health spending is expected to rise to more than 31 percent, from slightly less than 29 percent.

The changes reflect the expansion of Medicaid eligibility and the new subsidies for private insurance, as well as the increase in Medicare enrollment as baby boomers join the program.

When Mr. Romney and other Republicans complain of a federal takeover, they are referring to more than spending and enrollment in government health programs. They say the new health care law will require most Americans to purchase "government-approved insurance" or pay a new tax. The tax issue was at the heart of the Supreme Court's much-debated 5-4 decision in June to uphold the president's health care overhaul law, the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans also say that health insurance will be subject to much more federal regulation, specifying the types of benefits that must be offered; the value, or generosity, of the benefit package; and many other details.

Mr. Obama and other Democrats say these standards are needed to make sure consumers get real protection, not just "bare bones" coverage.

- Robert Pear

10:24 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Obama Supporters Pleased So Far

Mr. Romney interrupting the moderator is not going over well.

"So arrogant!" Mr. Jernigan said. "He thinks he gets the last word on everything."

Ms. Gardner added: "It's typical salesman, businessman. He wants to always have the last word. But it comes across as rude."

Mr. Obama scores well for defending himself, so far.

"A big complaint I hear is that Obama is a big elitist, a smug blah-blah, and it's Romney who is doing the snarky things," Ms. Jernigan said.

Her husband added: "I think hanging out with Bill Clinton has done him well. He's doing a better job of explaining, 'Here's what we did and here's why we did it.' It's better than I've seen him do in the past, so I'm pretty pleased with his performance so far."

- Susan Saulny

10:20 P.M. | Professor Obama Returns

During some of the lower points of Mr. Obama's first campaign for president, he was at times criticized for being more the professor than the politician. As great a speaker as he could be in some settings, he could also lull audiences into a slumber with detailed discussions of policy, often delivered at a slow speed and in a bit of a monotone. At many times Wednesday night, Professor Obama appears to have returned.

To an extent, that reflects what has always been the cycle of the Obama personality: his professorial periods never lasted too long. But it does appear more vivid when contrasted with Mr. Romney, who appears to have had an extra bowl of Cheerios this morning. One example: Mr. Romney has offered a catalog of disputable claims, particularly around his own health care plan, that will no doubt have fact-checkers hard at work over the next few hours. But Mr. Obama's responses seem more professorial; more a technical scolding than the kind of rebuttal that one expects in a debate like this.

- Adam Nagourney

10:16 P.M. | Romney Prepared for Questions on Health Care Plan

Mitt Romney offered a vigorous response to President Obama's suggestion that his health care plan in Massachusetts was the model for Obamacare.

Having confronted that charge repeatedly during the Republican primaries, Mr. Romney often stumbled. But on Wednesday night, he seemed ready.

He hailed the effort in Massachusetts, in which Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the plan, to the passage of Obamacare with only Democratic votes.

"You pushed through a plan without a single Republican vote," he said.

He was also ready with a list of the differences between his state plan and the federal plan.

He said the Massachusetts plan didn't raise taxes, didn't cut Medicare, didn't create an "unelected board" and didn't cause people to lose their insurance.

"The right answer is not to have the federal government take over health care and start mandating to the health care institutions across America," Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Obama pushed back against Mr. Romney's remarks. But the Republican's preparation was clearly evident in the answer.

- Michael D. Shear

10:11 P.M. | Voters' Voices: All About the Numbers

WORTHINGTON, Ohio - Numbers. Numbers. There are so many numbers. What's the effect of the statistic overload?

"I think that these figures will be lost on a lot of people who aren't paying careful attention," Mr. Jernigan said.

Mr. Gardner continued: "And the numbers are so specific. But what's a trillion dollars over 10 years? It's an arbitrary number. What does that mean? I don't know where a lot of these numbers are coming from. I haven't heard a lot of them before, but it's funny how specific they are."

"Seems like it's more impactful or might seem more believable to some people to hear specific numbers," Mr. Gardner said. "But if these numbers are false, it's going to be off-putting."

- Susan Saulny

10:08 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Fact-Checking $716 Billion

WORTHINGTON, Ohio - "The cost of health care is prohibitive and we have to deal with cost," Mr. Romney said. "Obamacare is adding to cost."

"Expensive things hurts families," Mr. Romney said. "The second thing, it cuts $716 billion from Medicare."

That number - $716 billion - drew some cackles from the people watching here in Ohio, because they are aware that it is the exact same amount of savings contained in the Paul Ryan plan.

"That's basically Romney saying 'shame on you' for the thing that they'd do anyway," Mr. Jernigan said. "Ryan is part of Romney's ticket and there's no way Romney can't know that. And plus, it's not a cut. It's savings. I applaud Paul Ryan for being able to recognize those savings, but it's not exactly honest for Romney to criticize someone for exactly what he would do anyway."

- Susan Saulny

10:08 P.M. | Fact Check: Romney on Dodd-Frank

Mr. Romney argued that Dodd-Frank, Mr. Obama's financial regulatory reform law, designated certain financial firms as "too big to fail," giving them a "blank check" and implicit government backing.

The law does designate some financial institutions as "systemically important." But it also puts them under significant additional regulatory scrutiny and requires them to write "living wills," telling the government how to unwind them.

That said, Mr. Romney's criticism of the law is a common one, and many liberals and conservatives share his belief that it would not prevent future bailouts of systemically important firms.

For his part, Mr. Romney has promised to repeal Dodd-Frank and to put in place a smarter system of rules and regulations. He has thus far been light on detail. But he has offered support for some of Dodd-Frank's main goals - like bolstering capital requirements.

- Annie Lowrey

10:05 P.M. | 'Obamacare' as Criticism or Praise

During the early part of the Republican primaries, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, got into trouble when he declined to attack Mr. Romney by linking him to "Obamacare," the president's health care plan.

The hesitation during one of the debates was seen as timidity, and Mr. Pawlenty's campaign for the Republican nomination did not last much longer.

But Wednesday night, Mr. Obama embraced the term "Obamacare," saying he likes it.

What a difference a year or so makes.

- Michael D. Shear

10:05 P.M. | Fact Check: Obama's Health Care Law and the Deficit

Repealing Mr. Obama's health care law, which Mr. Romney said he would do, would actually increase the federal deficit.

This summer, after Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal the law, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that doing so would increase the federal deficit by $109 billion over the next decade. That is because the parts of the law that would require more spending to expand coverage would be offset by the parts of the law that raise new revenues and curb spending - including provisions calling to curb the growth of Medicare costs and several new taxes and fees. Repealing the law would also mean that 30 million fewer people would have health insurance in 2022, it projected.

- Michael Cooper

10:04 P.M. | Voters' Voices: On Medicare and Debating Style

Is Medicare changing? Both candidates insisted that nothing would change for the elderly today. "Future seniors" got a lot of attention. From the audience here, so did the personal style of the candidates as they answered the Medicare questions.

"If you're 54 or 55, you might want to listen," Mr. Obama said. "I don't think vouchers are the right way to go."

Mr. Romney did not use the word "vouchers," and contended that future seniors should be able to choose the current, traditional Medicare or a private plan.

"Isn't that already the case?" Ms. Gardner said.

When Mr. Romney said he'd prefer a private plan, she continued: "Wouldn't everyone? You prefer a private plan, and you can afford it. That's the difference."

When Mr. Romney interrupted Mr. Obama's next answer, it didn't go over well.

"Tell him to shut up!" Mr. Jernigan said to the television, adding, "He keeps inserting himself."

Mr. Gardner said, "Can Obama speak? He's just been standing there for a few minutes."

Mr. Jernigan is busy fact-checking.

- Susan Saulny

10:04 P.M. | Fact Check: On Medicare Plans

Mr. Romney's Medicare plan for giving future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance or a version of traditional Medicare came under scrutiny.

Both agreed that old studies suggesting that the plan would raise the out-of-pocket costs of the elderly by more than $6,000 were out of date, but they disagreed on the effect of the plan. Mr. Romney suggested that private insurers would be more efficient, while Mr. Obama warned that they might cherry-pick the healthiest patients and endanger regular Medicare. And he questioned just how the plan would save money. "The money has to come from somewhere," he said.

An old proposal by Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, originally wanted to give future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance - and to limit the growth of those payments to the rate of inflation. Since health care costs rise faster than inflation, such a plan would leave beneficiaries facing higher costs. But Mr. Ryan revised his plan, and Mr. Romney has further altered it - but leaving key details too vague to estimate its impact.

The Romney campaign's policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote last month that while higher-income seniors might be asked to pay more under Mr. Romney's plan, "all seniors will be guaranteed sufficient support because the support is actually set based on what plans will cost."

But the campaign has not detailed how the plan would work. A question and answer section of the campaign's Web site puts it this way: "How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow? Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost."

And Mr. Romney has suggested limiting the growth of the subsidies in the past. He told The Washington Examiner last December that allowing the subsidies to grow at the rate of medical inflation "would have no particular impact on reining in the excessive cost of our entitlement program."

So if his campaign's theory that increased competition among private plans will slow the growth of health care costs proves wrong, future beneficiaries could well face higher costs. (Mr. Romney's pledge to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law would also cost them more, because part of the law helps Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs by filing the so-called "doughnut hole.") But without knowing the size of the subsidies or how fast they would grow, it is impossible to assign a dollar value to the cost, as the Obama campaign has tried to do.

- Michael Cooper

10:01 P.M. | Fact Check: Spending 42 Percent of G.D.P.

Mr. Romney argued that government spending is equivalent to more than 40 percent of economic output. Is that right? It is true if you include state, local and federal spending. But government spending has spiked considerably due to the recession - an important piece of context.

Estimates of total government spending as a share of economic output vary. Mr. Romney's figure appeared to come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Recent historical figures from the White House indicate that total government spending was 37.1 percent of the economy in 2009, falling to 35.4 percent last year.

- Annie Lowery

10:00 P.M. | Obama Passive, Romney Assertive

The pre-debate spin from Obama aides was that President Obama would be at a disadvantage on Wednesday because it's been four years since he was involved in a debate. Whether or not they believed that, it appears to be a prescient observation. Mr. Obama appears slow and passive, as if he were addressing reporters in the Rose Garden, and letting repeated opportunities to challenge Mr. Romney pass. The kind of energy Mr. Obama brought to the campaign trail - pressing Mr. Romney, for example, on what deductions he would eliminate to balance off reductions in tax rates - has been absent.

Mr. Romney has shown no hesitation to interrupt Mr. Obama; the president appears far less willing, or able, to do the same. The president seems almost deferential to Mr. Romney, while Mr. Romney has commandeered long stretches of the debate. And the president has arguably been hurt by the passive presence of Jim Lehrer, the moderator. Mr. Obama seems to be counting on Mr. Lehrer to challenge Mr. Romney where he has not, or at least bring some order to the session.

- Adam Nagourney

10:01 P.M. | Fact Check: Size of the Oil Industry Subsidies

Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama disputed the size and effect of oil industry subsidies. Mr. Obama said the oil industry received $4 billion a year in favorable tax treatment, although Mr. Romney said the figure was $2.8 billion. The president's figure has appeared in budget documents in each of the past three years and has not been disputed by the industry. Mr. Romney said he was willing to see the subsidies eliminated as part of a broader budget deal.

Mr. Obama specifically proposes to eliminate more than a half-dozen tax exemptions for oil and gas companies large and small. The tax breaks for oil have a long history - the so-called percentage depletion allowance for oil and natural gas wells dates to the 1920s - and have withstood repeated efforts to kill them.

Mr. Romney compared the size of the oil industry subsidies to the money Mr. Obama's stimulus program devoted to green energy projects, including Solyndra, a failed solar panel maker, and two struggling electric car manufacturers, Fisker and Tesla. Mr. Romney said correctly that the stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, had spent $90 billion on alternative energy, energy efficiency and related programs. He said that the program had backed a number of "losers" that had cost taxpayers millions.

Solyndra did indeed collapse after receiving $528 million in federal stimulus money intended to accelerate clean energy development and create jobs. It touched off an 18-month Congressional investigation and a number of embarrassing disclosures about White House efforts to promote the company for political reasons while aware of its financial troubles. However, the Solyndra grant process began under the George W. Bush administration, and it received bipartisan Congressional and lobbying support.

It was by far the largest of three prominent failures of the loan guarantee program. Beacon Power received $39 million in federal funds, with the government recovering all but $8 million of that. Abound Solar's collapse will cost the taxpayers as much as $68 million. Together, the three failed companies cost the government about $575 million.

But in creating the program, which has to date issued $34.5 billion in loans, Congress set aside $2.4 billion to cover losses, so the loan defaults are a relatively small proportion of the overall portfolio.

The electric car makers and a number of battery companies supported by the federal loan guarantee program are facing difficulties and could end up costing the government money.

An audit commissioned by the White House found that the loan guarantee program needed tighter oversight and stricter loan standards. But it found that the loss reserve was adequate to cover expected future defaults.

Mr. Romney campaigned in May at the Solyndra factory in California, where he called the venture "a symbol of gross waste," a failure of the president's stimulus package and an example of Mr. Obama's poor stewardship of a shaky economy.

- John M. Broder

9:56 P.M. | Candidates Dispute Medicare Cuts

Medicare became one of the primary areas of debate Wednesday night as the president and Mr. Romney clashed over how to save the medical program for the elderly.

Mr. Obama insisted that Mr. Romney's voucher plan for Medicare would end up leaving the elderly at the mercy of private insurance companies and would force additional costs on them as well.

Eventually, the president said, under Mr. Romney's plan, "the traditional Medicare system will collapse and then you have folks like my grandmother at the mercy of the private health insurance."

Mr. Romney countered by saying that Mr. Obama had cut $716 billion from Medicare. "I can't understand how you can cut Medicare $716 billion for current recipients of Medicare," he said.

Not true, Mr. Obama said. He insisted that his plan cut costs to insurance companies and redirected the $716 billion to other parts of the Medicare system.

"Using that money," he said, the government could ensure "lower prescription drug costs for seniors" and make a "dent in providing the preventive care that will ultimately save money."

- Michael D. Shear

9:55 P.M. | Fact Check: Medicare's $716 Billion Cut?

Mr. Obama initially seemed to pre-empt Mr. Romney's frequent criticism that the president cut $716 billion from Medicare, by bringing it up himself and saying the cost savings were from reduced payments to insurance companies and other health care providers. But Mr. Romney returned to it, suggesting that the $716 billion in Medicare reductions would indeed come from current beneficiaries.

While fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked this claim, it remains a standard attack line for Mr. Romney.

The charge that Mr. Obama took $716 billion from Medicare recipients to pay for his "Obamacare" has several problems - not least the fact that Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the identical savings in his annual budget plans that nearly all House Republicans voted for in the past two years.

Mr. Obama did not cut benefits by $716 billion over 10 years as part of his 2010 health care law; rather, he reduced Medicare reimbursements to health care providers, chiefly insurance companies and drug manufacturers. And the law gave Medicare recipients more generous benefits for prescription drugs and free preventive care like mammograms.

According to nonpartisan analysts, it is Mr. Romney who would both cut benefits and add costs for beneficiaries if he restored the $716 billion in reductions. Restoring higher payments to insurers and other companies would in turn increase Medicare premiums because beneficiaries share in Medicare's total cost. Marilyn Moon, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, has calculated that a Medicare recipient's out-of-pocket expenses would increase $577 a year on average by 2022.

Also, the Obama reductions added eight years to the life of Medicare's financially troubled trust fund, to 2024, according to Medicare trustees. If the cuts were restored, the insolvency date would revert to 2016.

The charge that Mr. Obama raided Medicare originated with House Republicans two years ago in the 2010 midterm elections, and is credited with helping them to win a House majority. In 2010, however, they spoke of $500 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years, through fiscal year 2020; $716 billion is the updated sum for 2013 through 2022, and reflects increases in the cost of care and the number of Medicare recipients.

- Jackie Calmes

9:46 P.M. | Fact Check: Cutting Deficits a Total of $4 Trillion

Mr. Obama said that he has a plan to cut deficits a total of $4 trillion over the next decade.

Some nonpartisan groups dispute this assertion. Yet while Mr. Obama still uses the $4 trillion figure on the campaign trail, his current budget updates it to $5.3 trillion through 2022, reflecting compounding savings in later years.

The difference is mainly in what Mr. Obama counts as deficit reduction. He counts: $1.7 trillion in savings from budget compromises with Congressional Republicans in 2011; more than $1.4 trillion from the expiration of Bush-era tax rates on high incomes and $480 billion from other revenue-raising tax provisions; $597 billion in savings from Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies and other so-called entitlement spending programs; $848 billion in savings from the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and $800 billion from reduced interest payments on a smaller federal debt. (Some of this money goes to additional job-creation measures.)

The liberal Center on the Budget and Policy Priorities has concluded that the $4 trillion deficit reduction claim is justified, even though the center does not count savings from the wars in future years. But two centrist, business-supported groups - the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Concord Coalition - have contested the numbers. The committee puts Mr. Obama's 10-year deficit reduction at no more than $2.4 trillion.

While the committee credits Mr. Obama with "some serious debt reduction proposals - including from higher revenues, health care reforms and other spending reductions" - it does not count savings from drawing down war operations, lower interest on debt or some of the 10-year spending cuts agreed to with Republicans last year.

These items, the committee and other analysts say, were either already planned or required no action on the administration's part in future years.

Others, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, counter that Mr. Obama should get credit for spending agreements last year, because the reductions from annual discretionary programs follow on recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission and only by including them can Mr. Obama's plan be compared to Simpson-Bowles, which has become a sort of benchmark for deficit reduction efforts.

Jeff Vanke, a former analyst at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, acknowledged in an interview that "there are good reasons" to count the savings from the 2011 bipartisan spending agreements. And if those are credited to Mr. Obama's deficit reduction tally, he added, "then his claim is close to true."

But, all sides agree, it is not enough to right the nation's fiscal imbalance.

- Jackie Calmes

9:43 P.M. | Spirited Back and Forth on the Deficit

Mitt Romney accused the president of doubling the deficit during his time in office, a broken promise from his last campaign.

"The president said he'd cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it," Mr. Romney said.

That led to a back-and-forth over taxes and the deficit, with both men offering the same arguments that have divided Washington for years.

Mr. Obama said that he had proposed a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan, but said it would require a "balanced" plan that includes some new revenues from wealthy individuals.

"When Governor Romney stood on a stage with other Republican candidates, he was asked, 'Would you take $10 of spending cuts for just $1 of revenue?' And he said no," Mr. Obama said. "If you take such an unbalanced approach, that means you will be gutting our investments in schools and education."

The debate ping-longed back and forth, with neither Mr. Romney nor Mr. Obama giving any ground on the basic issue of whether tax increases should be part of the solution.

"If we are serious, we have to take a balanced, responsible approach," Mr. Obama said.

"When the economy is growing slow like this, you shouldn't raise taxes on anyone," Mr. Romney said.

- Michael D. Shear

9:40 P.M. | Fact Check: Deficit Reduction Plan

President Obama is right that Mr. Romney indicated at a Republican debate that he would reject a deficit reduction plan that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 of revenue increases.

At a debate in Ames, Iowa, in August 2011, Bret Baier, the Fox News moderator, asked all of the Republican candidates to raise their hands if they would refuse to sign on to a legislative package that included $10 of spending cuts for every $1 of revenue increases.

They all raised their hands.

- Michael Cooper

9:37 P.M. | Fact Check: Doubling the Deficit

Mr. Romney says Mr. Obama doubled the deficit. That is not true. When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office had already projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30 of that year, would be $1.2 trillion. (It ended up as $1.4 trillion.) For fiscal year 2012, which ended last week, the deficit is expected to be $1.1 trillion - just under the level in the year he was inaugurated. Measured as a share of the economy, as economists prefer, the deficit has declined more significantly - from 10.1 percent of the economy's total output in 2009 to 7.3 percent for 2012.

- Jackie Calmes

9:35 P.M. | Fact Check: Job Training Overlap and Duplication

Mr. Romney, discussing the important of education in boosting the economy, mentioned that the federal government is mismanaging job training programs. "We've got 47 of them housed in the federal government reporting to eight different agencies," he said. "Overhead is overwhelming.''

He is correct about the 47 different programs, according to a Government Accounting Office report last year that identified areas to avoid duplication and overlap. The agencies spent about $18 billion in 2009.

- Trip Gabriel

9:33 P.M. | Fact Check: A $5 Trillion Cut

A number of readers have asked the following question: "How accurate are President Obama's claims about Mitt Romney's $5 trillion tax cut?"

In the first debate segment, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney repeatedly sparred over whether or not Mr. Romney has proposed a $5 trillion tax cut.

It is true that Mr. Romney has proposed "revenue neutral" tax reform, meaning that he would not expand the deficit. However, he has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent - which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion.

To make up that revenue, Mr. Romney has said he wants to clear out the underbrush of deductions and loopholes in the tax code. But he has not yet specified how he would do so, opening himself to persistent Democratic attacks.

This week, in an interview with a Colorado television station, Mr. Romney did shed some light - floating the idea of capping each household's deductions at $17,000.

"As an option, you could say everybody's going to get up to a $17,000 deduction. And you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others, your health care deduction, and you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way," he said. "Higher-income people might have a lower number."

The deduction cap has the virtue of avoiding the tough negotiations over which tax expenditures to unwind. Many tax expenditures are highly popular, like the deduction for charitable giving. Moreover, many are important to the stability of the economy. Suddenly ending the home mortgage interest deduction, for instance, would threaten destabilizing the housing market.

But a number of unanswered questions about Mr. Romney's tax plan remain.

For instance, Mr. Romney did not address how his proposed cap on deductions would affect tax credits. (Generally, deductions lower a given family's level of taxable income and credits erase part of their overall tax bill.)

It is also unclear whether his proposal to cap deductions would raise enough revenue to pay for his income tax rate cuts - at least not without increasing the tax burden on families making less than $200,000 a year, which Mr. Romney has vowed that he will not do.

- Annie Lowrey

9:34 P.M. | Fact Check: Rise in Food Stamps

Mr. Romney just cited the rise in people on food stamps in the last four years.

The number of people receiving food stamps - or taking part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the program is now known - rose to 46,670,373 in June, up from 31,983,716 when Mr. Obama took office, according to the Department of Agriculture. The average monthly benefit per household in June was $276.50; nearly half of those receiving assistance are children.

An analysis of the growth in the program by FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, concluded that the recent increase "is largely due to the economic downturn and sluggish recovery."

- Michael Cooper

9:32 P.M. | Fact Check: Small Business and the Bush-Era Tax Cuts

Mr. Romney, as he often does, just invoked the plight of small businesses when criticizing Mr. Obama's plan to let the Bush-era income tax cuts for the highest earning Americans expire - a plan that enjoys the support of pluralities of likely voters and independent voters in recent polls.

But relatively few small businesses would be hit with the tax increase, which is actually aimed mainly at the incomes of high earners, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation of Congress.

Mr. Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts on income above $200,000 for individuals and income above $250,000 for households, raising the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now. Some small businesses, which file taxes as "S corporations," would be hit by the higher rates, but the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that only 3 percent would earn enough to be hit by the new, higher top marginal rates. And not all of those businesses are exactly small: thousands of them would have receipts of more than $50 million a year, the committee found. The Romney campaign noted that those few businesses play an important role, and said that they should not be burdened with higher taxes.

Would those tax cuts kill jobs? Economists generally agree that raising taxes, and taking money that would otherwise cycle through the economy, can cost jobs; that is one of the reasons that Mr. Obama's stimulus plan included tax cuts. But it is worth noting that the rates Mr. Obama wants to return to were last seen during the Clinton administration - when the nation created more 22.7 million jobs, as the Romney campaign has noted.

- Michael Cooper

9:29 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Questions on Romney's Tax Plan

WORTHINGTON, Ohio - President Obama's opening lines to his "sweetie," Michelle Obama, wishing her a happy anniversary earned him a few sympathetic "awwws" from the women in the room here. But Mr. Romney got a good reaction from the folks here, too, when he joked about the debate being a "romantic place" for him and the president.

"Ha!" they said. Now on to jobs:

"Middle-income Americans are being crushed," Mr. Romney said. "No tax cuts that add to the deficit. But I do want to reduce the burden paid by middle-income Americans."

Mr. Romney's contention that he would reduce the tax burden on the middle class and reduce the deficit confused some of the debate watchers here.

"But what about his own statements about the across the board 20 percent tax cuts?" Mr. Jernigan asked.

Mr. Romney repeated his claim that his tax plan would not add to the national debt, and that income earners at the top would not get extra breaks.

"Well, then you can't accomplish the things you promise," Mr. Jernigan said to the television. "He's basically completely backed off saying he's going to do an across the board tax cut."

Ms. Gardner added, "Is this him not standing by his word?"

When Mr. Obama said that Mr. Romney's math didn't add up, Ms. Gardner said, "It's math, it's arithmetic, thank you!"

- Susan Saulny

9:30 P.M. | Fact Check: Oil and Gas Production

Mr. Romney agreed with Mr. Obama that domestic oil and gas production were at their highest levels in years. But he asserted that all of the increase had come on private, not public lands, and that the Obama administration had cut oil and gas permitting in half on public lands. Neither assertion is fully accurate.

Oil and gas production on public lands increased modestly (about 13 percent for oil and about 6 percent for gas) in the first three years of the Obama administration over the last three years of the Bush administration, according to an analysis from the Energy Information Administration. Production on private lands has increased more quickly, particularly through hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas in Texas, North Dakota and the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Regarding drilling permits, the Department of the Interior produced a report earlier this year showing that drilling permits received and issued by the agency had indeed declined from the last years of the Bush administration to the first years of the Obama administration. In fiscal year 2007, the government issued 8,964 permits to drill on public lands; in 2008 the figure was 7,846. The numbers for 2009 and 2010 were 5,306 and 5,237. This is a reduction, but not by half, as Mr. Romney asserted.

The administration froze all deep water drilling and slowed shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and spill in 2010. Since then, the Interior Department has approved more than 750 drilling permits for the gulf, and production is approaching pre-spill levels, although it is below what was projected before the accident.

Before Deepwater Horizon, Gulf oil production was 1.75 million barrels a day, and it was projected to increase to 2.2 million barrels a day by this year. Instead, because of the yearlong halt on new drilling, production is about 700,000 barrels a day lower than forecast. Much of that oil is being replaced by Saudi imports, experts said.

For comparison purposes, the federal government issued 69 permits to drill in deep water (more than 500 feet) in 2008 and 76 permits in 2009. Permits dropped to 32 in 2010, when the gulf was under a deep water drilling moratorium for much of the year. In 2011, the government issued 38 deep water permits; so far in 2012, 82 such permits have been granted.

- John M. Broder

9:27 P.M. | Fact Check: Household Income Decline

Have household incomes really fallen by more than $4,000 since President Obama took office, as Mitt Romney just charged?

They have, at least according to an analysis by Sentier Research, a firm that specializes in demographic and income data. It issued a report last month which found that median household income has fallen by $4,520 since Mr. Obama took office - with the median household making $50,678 in August, down from $55,198 in January 2009.

Gordon Green, one of the co-authors of the analysis, said in an interview that the firm derives its monthly household income data from the Current Population Survey, the survey by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics that is used to determine the nation's unemployment rate. Mr. Green, a former official with the Census Bureau, said that Sentier's monthly figures generally "line up quite well" with the official income data that is released each year by the Census.

The Census released its 2011 income data last month. It found that median household income was $50,054 in 2011, down from $52,195 in 2009.

So the trend is unmistakable: household income has fallen since 2009.

But how much President Obama can be faulted for that decline is a matter of heated debate. Income also continued to fall for several years after the 2001 recession ended, Sentier's data shows. This time the drop in incomes is steeper but the recession - which began in 2007, when George W. Bush was in office - was much more severe. One reason pay has continued to fall after the recession officially ended is that many people who lost their jobs in the recession later took new jobs with lower wages.

The political debate over which party deserves blame for falling incomes - and which can better turn things around - is one of the central questions of the election. Mr. Obama has faulted Republicans for not passing his jobs bill and the Democratic platform has supported union rights as a way to lift pay, while Mr. Romney has charged that Mr. Obama's policies have discouraged investment and the Republican platform supports so-called right-to-work laws to make it easier for employers to start non-unionized businesses.

- Michael Cooper

9:27 P.M. | A Focus on Taxes

The central question of the first part of the debate? Does Mitt Romney want to cut taxes for the rich?

"I'm not looking for a five trillion tax cut," Mr. Romney declared, accusing Mr. Obama of misleading people about his tax plan.

"I've got five boys," Mr. Romney said, suggesting that he is used to fibbing.

"I will not reduce the taxes paid by higher-income Americans," Mr. Romney said. "I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income Americans."

Mr. Obama's retort? To insist that Mr. Romney's math doesn't add up.

"For 18 months, he's been running on this tax plan," Mr. Obama said. "Now, five weeks before the election, he's saying that his big, bold idea is, never mind."

- Michael D. Shear

9:23 P.M. | Fact Check: Romney on Middle-Class Taxes

In the first minutes of the debate, Mr. Romney defended himself against the charge that he would cut taxes for the wealthy and raise taxes on the middle class.

The lack of specificity in his tax plan has opened him to the charge.

Here's why. Mr. Romney has said he wants to cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent while having the government bring in the same amount of revenue, meaning that he would not widen the deficit further. He would accomplish that goal by clearing out the underbrush of credits, loopholes and preferences in the tax code. He has also promised that his plan will be
"distributionally neutral" ­- that he will not raise the tax burden on the poor or middle class.

Here's the problem. As explained in a detailed paper by the Tax Policy Center, if you cut tax rates by 20 percent, you give the wealthy a multibillion-dollar tax break. Even if you take away all of their credits and loopholes and preferential rates, they still do not owe the government as much as they did before. If the rich are paying less, then the poor and middle class must pay more in order to raise the same amount of money.

Mr. Romney's campaign argues that the math does work out, in no small part because they expect their tax plan to help bolster growth.

Still, independent economists question whether it is possible. Of course, rather than breaking his promise not to raise taxes on the poor and middle class, Mr. Romney could break one of his other promises. His tax plan could widen the deficit. Or he could lower marginal tax rates less than 20 percent.

- Annie Lowrey

9:20 P.M. | Fact Check: Energy Independence and Job Creation

Mr. Romney said that achieving energy independence in North America - meaning that all the energy consumed in the United States can come from domestic sources, plus Canada and Mexico - would create four million new jobs by 2020. In his energy plan introduced in August, Mr. Romney cited a study from Citigroup that asserted that the added production could create 3.6 million new jobs, including one million in manufacturing.

- John M. Broder

9:16 P.M. | Reader Question: Who Directs the Debate Broadcast?

Q. Who is directing the TV for the debate? Do all the networks have their own cameras, or is there a pool feed? - John Lister, New Brunswick, N.J.

Jeremy W. Peters: There is a pool feed everyone broadcasting the debate draws from. However, because there are multiple cameras in the shooting from different angles, getting different shots, the networks are able to pull a feed from any one of those and broadcast the shot as they see fit. CNN, for example, has been using a split screen this evening, showing Mr. Romney on the left and Mr. Obama on the right.

- The New York Times

9:16 P.M. | Fact Check: Savings From Drawing Down Wars

President Obama just said he wanted to "take some of the money we're saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America," repeating a call he has made a number of times.

But the pledge has been derided by some fiscal analysts as something of a gimmick: the nation's annual deficits have been much larger than its yearly war costs in recent years. So even without the expense of the wars, the nation is still expected to run deficits in the years to come - the savings from the wars will not be enough to yield a surplus to spend on things like infrastructure at home.

So while the president could certainly change the nation's spending priorities - and call for more domestic infrastructure spending and less military spending - the end of the wars would not suddenly produce a pot of money for other uses. It would simply reduce the size of the nation's deficits.

Mr. Obama made a similar proposal in his State of the Union address this year when he said, "Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home." His 2013 budget proposal said that "the administration is proposing to use savings from ending the war in Iraq and winding down operations in Afghanistan" on what it called "overdue" transportation investments.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that war spending in Afghanistan and elsewhere could total $1.4 trillion over the next decade based on current spending levels. But it notes that actual spending could be $852 billion less than that if the "number of deployed troops is smaller and the pace of operations is diminished."

Some Republicans have taken a dim view of counting unspent future war costs as savings that can be spent elsewhere.

In 2009 the House Budget Committee - led by Representative Paul D. Ryan, who is now Mitt Romney's running mate - issued a report criticizing the Obama administration, saying that its "budget assumes an elevated path of war spending that was never going to be followed, and then claims savings through a reduction that was going to occur anyway." But some critics have claimed that some of Mr. Ryan's deficit reduction proposals counted on similar war savings.

- Michael Cooper

9:16 P.M. | Candidates State Differences, but No Scathing Attacks

Mitt Romney and President Obama both opened their first debate on a relatively genteel tone, noting their differences, but avoiding any scathing attacks in the first few minutes.

Mr. Obama started by describing the difficult economic situation that faced the country when he started as president.

"Four years ago, we went through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," he said. "Because of the resilience and the determination of the American people, we have begun to fight our way back."

He did criticize Mr. Romney's approach, saying that "Governor Romney has a perspective that says if we cut taxes skewed toward the wealthy and cut back regulations, we'll be better off. I have a different view."

Mr. Romney, too, drew contrasts to the president's plan, saying that "the people who are having a hard time right now are middle-income Americans."

"Middle-income families are being crushed," he said.

Mr. Romney also spent a few minutes going through what he said was his five-point plan: energy independence, trade, education and training, balanced budget and small business.

He described several people he had met along the campaign trail, each of whom asked whether he can help their economic situation.

"The answer is yes, we can help. But it's going to take a different path, not the one that we've been on," Mr. Romney said.

- Michael D. Shear

9:02 P.M. | Voters' Voices: Watching From Ohio

WORTHINGTON, Ohio - Theater seats? Check. Shrimp cocktails and crudité? Check. Flat screen television with the volume on low just waiting for the big show to start at 9 p.m.? Check.

Two relatives who have already unfriended people here on Facebook because of their views about the candidates? Oh, yes.

The first night of truly must-see TV this fall season, for the Gardner and Jernigan families in this suburb of Columbus, anyway, is the first presidential debate Wednesday night between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger.

Jeremy Gardner, 32, a software developer and independent voter, is hosting a small viewing party in a cozy living room where even his two Chihuahuas are jumping around looking truly excited.

The preshow tension is building, believe it or not. (There are partisans in the room.) Already, someone has had to take a break. "I'm getting an eye twitch!" said Heather Jernigan, Mr. Gardner's sister-in-law, who is a fan of Mr. Obama. "I've got to go outside and have a smoke."

Ms. Jernigan, 48, is so supportive of Mr. Obama that she is worried that even if he does well, his opponents will find a way to give his performance a negative review.

"Rainbows could shoot out of his ears and it wouldn't matter," said Ms. Jernigan, who works in operations for a major insurance company.

Mr. Gardner is open to being swayed, but at the moment he prefers Mr. Obama.

"Obama has an agenda and there's something that you can agree or disagree with," he said. "I'd like to hear Romney's plan about anything."

Brent Jernigan, 48, a business consultant who is married to Heather Jernigan, is the ultimate solo fact checker. It was his fact checking on Facebook that cost him his aunt's friendship. The issue had to do with early voting for the general public, with which she disagreed.

"I'm pretty decided for Obama, even though I don't like the continuation of a lot of Bush foreign policy," he said. "Guantánamo is still open. He has done some good things, like pulling troops out of Iraq. But he's ramped up certain types of surveillance. That's a problem for me. There are things that I don't like."

What do they all want out of the night's performance?

"I want to see an actual plan from Romney," Mr. Jernigan said. "I'd like to see Obama be very forceful in defending his own actions as president. And I wouldn't be opposed to a highly entertaining moment from Romney, something like, 'I can see Russia from my house!' "

- Susan Saulny

8:54 P.M. | Debate Format, Explained

Need a guide to the debate tonight? Here's how Jim Lehrer, the moderator, has decided to structure the 90-minute event.

The Economy - I
The Economy - II
The Economy - III
Health Care
The Role of Government
Governing

Each of the segments will run for 15 minutes, and Mr. Lehrer will have the ability to adjust the subject matter of any segment "because of news developments," according to the Web site of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

As moderator, Mr. Lehrer has the latitude to ask the subjects in a different order.

- Michael D. Shear

8:47 P.M. | Michelle Obama Celebrates 20th Anniversary at Debate

Michelle Obama described herself as a parent watching her child on the balance beam, saying that she gets "so nervous" while watching her husband, the president, on the debate stage.

"You're just standing there trying not to have any expression at all," Mrs. Obama, the first lady, said in an interview with Jessica Yellin of CNN just before the debate started.

The Obamas were married 20 years ago Wednesday, and Mrs. Obama said she would never have imagined 20 years ago that she would be spending her anniversary at a debate.

"I can't say that this would have been the plan 20 years ago," she said, laughing. "I would not have chosen this. But I'm excited about it, and I know he's going to do a good job."

Mrs. Obama declined to criticize her husband or say what challenges he has to overcome during the debate.

"I do tell him to just have fun and relax and be himself," she said.

And she did not agree with Ann Romney, who recently criticized Republicans who have been harping on her husband by saying that campaigning is hard. Mrs. Obama said she likes it.

"The campaign experience is unique for everyone," Mrs. Obama said. "For me, I really enjoy campaigning. I think Barack and I, we both get energy from it."

- Michael D. Shear

8:30 P.M. | General Election Debates Versus Primary Debates

For those of you debate veterans who watched each of the 20 Republican primary face-offs, fair warning: you just might be disappointed.

The debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney is supposed to be a very different affair - more staid, serious and, well, quiet.

Gone will be the hooting and hollering from the crowds that helped to animate some of the Republican candidates this year. Remember Newt Gingrich getting the audience whipped up in South Carolina by attacking the news media? He got a standing ovation.

There are strict rules during a general election debate, enforced by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a very serious group. No applause. No booing. You might not even know they are there.

Also gone? The flashy pre-debate announcements that made some of the debates rival the opening of a Chicago Bulls game. From Massachussetts! At 6 foot 4 inches! It's Miiiiiittt Romney!

The primary debates were sponsored by individual networks, who saw them as an opportunity to strut their stuff, with fancy graphics, snazzy logos, cool technology partners and, of course, catchy music. By contrast, the general election debates are sponsored by the commission and carried by all of the networks.

If the primary debates were the cookies and ice cream of the political season, think of the general election debates as the veggies.

- Michael D. Shear

8:35 P.M. | The Caucus Click: Pre-Debate Games for Romney 

- The Caucus

8:22 P.M. | Ann Romney Acknowledges Frustration With News Media

Ann Romney remains frustrated by the news media's treatment of her husband as he runs for president, she acknowledged to CNN in an interview shown in the hour before the first debate Wednesday night.

"Everything is make or break for us for the last year and a half. We're getting kind of used to this," Mrs. Romney said to Gloria Borger in the interview. "We are getting used to the fact that the media puts a very high bar for us."

Mrs. Romney said she had not given her husband any specific advice about what to say during the face-off with the president. Instead, she told him to trust his instincts, she said.

"Mitt has to know," she said. "He has to feel what he's going to say when he's going to say it."

Asked about the comments Mitt Romney made about "the 47 percent," Mrs. Romney said she hoped the debate offered the public an opportunity to see that he cares about - and would be president for - all of the people in the country.

"There are many people that need Mitt's help right now," she said, adding that she wants people "to understand that this is a guy who does care, who does understand. That's why we're running."

- Michael D. Shear

8:17 P.M. | New Format Could Make for Better Exchanges

The new format for the presidential debate could be the best thing that has ever happened to modern presidential face-offs.

Or maybe not.

The candidates will have six 15-minute segments to debate policy, with no annoying buzzers or 60-second rebuttal limits. The structure will be provided by Jim Lehrer, the veteran moderator and former host of PBS's "News Hour," who will try to guide the conversation.

What will that mean? It could mean a more substantive discussion, with both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama freed to engage more deeply in serious exchanges about health care, spending, the deficit, education or leadership.

But these are two men who have spent the better part of a year - or more - practicing talking points over and over and over again. They give their stump speeches daily, honing exactly what they want to say. They do television ads where they read from scripts. Little is left to chance.

So it's possible that the vast 15-minute allotment will simply encourage the two men to launch into longer versions of the talking points, with only Mr. Lehrer able to stop them - if he can.

If history is any guide, he may have to intervene. Both candidates are prone to droning on. Mr. Obama is notoriously professorial; at one town hall meeting early in his presidency, he took more than 17 minutes to answer a single health care question. And Mr. Romney isn't known as the PowerPoint candidate because he likes short answers.

- Michael D. Shear

8:10 P.M. | The Second Screen Effect

The blues and reds of Wednesday's debate stage look just like they did in 2004 and 2008. But the ways that viewers take in the proceedings have changed markedly in that time.

Twitter, the short messaging social network, noted Wednesday afternoon that there had already been as twice as many Twitter messages about the debate as there were for all four debates in 2008 - a development that reflects the way Twitter and other social networking sites have matured drastically in the last four years.

The surge in so-called second screen behavior - reading and chatting online about a live event on the first screen - will most likely have an effect on the debates this year, as viewers, journalists and campaign surrogates react to the questions, answers and non-answers in real time.

Media companies have sought to take advantage of this behavior. Any number of major media outlets urged viewers to "watch with us" on Wednesday night, with flashy Web pages that combined commenting, fact-checking and advertisements from sponsors.

Still, the bulk of debate-watchers will be watching on a big screen television - some with phone, iPad or other device nearby.

NBC News is using the debate to test a new partnership with Zeebox, a second screen app backed by the news division's parent company, Comcast - one of many such apps that may come in handy for live events like the debates.

- Brian Stelter

7:35 P.M. | Debate Day for the Romneys 

DENVER - So just how did Mitt Romney spend his debate day?

He kicked off the morning at his hotel - the Renaissance by the airport - with meetings with his strategy team. Next, it was off to the University of Denver, for a pre-debate walk-through. He was joined at the debate hall by the senior advisers Eric Fehrnstrom, Peter Flaherty, Kevin Madden and Bob White.

Back at the hotel, Mr. Romney took the afternoon easy, spending time with his wife, Ann, four of his five sons - missing was Ben, a medical resident in Utah - and some of his grandchildren. For dinner, the Romneys ordered in from the Cheesecake Factory - a BBQ sandwich and spaghetti for Mr. Romney.

Though Mr. Romney and President Obama will face off in less than two hours, the two did have a close encounter (of sorts) earlier today: The president's motorcade raced past Mr. Romney's hotel shortly after Mr. Obama touched down in Denver.

- Ashley Parker

6:34 P.M. | What Romney and Obama's Body Language Says to Voters

Since the first televised presidential debate, campaigns have been aware that voters may judge candidates as much by their appearance and gestures as by their words. Go to Interactive Feature

- The New York Times

6:07 P.M. | After Three Days of Debate Prep, Obama Lands in Denver

DENVER - There was high anxiety on Air Force One Wednesday as President Obama flew from Las Vegas, where he had spent three days in debate prep, to Denver, for the face-off with Mitt Romney.

Appropriately for Game Day, Sam Kass, the personal chef to the Obamas, lined up to board the plane with a basketball tucked under his arm (no word on whether Mr. Obama got in some playing time at his debate camp).

An unusually large retinue of advisers accompanied the president: Gene Sperling, the chairman of the National Economic Council; David Plouffe and David Axelrod, the president's two top political advisers; and Jim Messina, the campaign manager.

"I'm really nervous," said one senior aide, immediately requesting anonymity.

After a turbulent approach over the Rocky Mountains that further unsettled the stomachs of passengers, Air Force One landed and disgorged a tense-looking crew. A more-disheveled-than-usual Mr. Axelrod rushed for his car, a few steps behind Mr. Plouffe, carrying a sheaf of papers.

- Mark Landler

4:55 P.M. | Debate Numerology

During the first presidential debate in 2008 between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, the candidates and moderator uttered 16,152 words. Wednesday's debate between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney should be about the same.

But how many of those words will actually be numbers?

Both candidates were poised to cite numbers, figures, statistics and percentages to bolster their arguments and attacks. Most of those numbers have become staples of the Republican and Democratic stump speeches during the past several months.

Here is a roundup of the most frequently cited figures and the ones most likely to be brought up at the debate in Denver. (And, at the bottom, a few that will not.) Read more ...

- Michael D. Shear

4:52 P.M. | In 90-Minute Debate, Candidates Stand on Equal Footing

DENVER - President Obama will have the first word at the presidential debate. Mitt Romney will have the last word. But even before they step onto the stage and shake hands here Wednesday evening, voters across the country are already starting to have the final word.

With a little more than a month left in the race, and early voting under way in 35 states, that is the reality facing Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney as they meet for the first of three face-to-face debates. While Republicans concede time may be fading for Mr. Romney to change the dynamic of the campaign, Democrats know it has not faded yet and both men face risks - and rewards - for their performances.

A presidential race between an incumbent and a challenger, which has played out for most of the year in biting television commercials and fiery speeches, suddenly narrows to a pair of candidates standing side-by-side starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time. For 90 minutes, the rivals will be essentially equal, creating what Mr. Romney's advisers believe is a critical opportunity to make a move in the race.

Here is a look at a few things to watch - in style and in substance - as the debate unfolds at the University of Denver, here in the battleground state of Colorado, for the first of three encounters between the president and Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Read more ...

- Jeff Zeleny


LOAD-DATE: October 15, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



670 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 11:56 PM EST


Ad Watch: Mitt Romney previews debate message;
It's a shorter version of Romney's "Too Many Americans" ad, in which he makes his case directly to the camera.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 106 words


Mitt Romney, "Many Americans"

What it says: "We should measure our compassion by how many of our fellow Americans are able to get good paying jobs, not by how many are on welfare."

What it means: It's a shorter version of Romney's "Too Many Americans" ad, in which he makes his case directly to the camera. Romney reminds Americans of how bad things are under President Obama while emphasizing his own brand of empathy. 

Who will see it: Romney currently has 30- and 60-second ad buys up in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia, according to a Republican media buyer.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



671 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 9:38 PM EST


Obama holds double-digit lead over Romney in Wisconsin, poll shows;
A new Marquette Law School poll shows the president leading his GOP challenger 53 percent to 42 percent in Wisconsin.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 559 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Claire McCaskill raises nearly $6 million in the third quarter

Who won't be watching the debate? Persuadable voters

Latinos eat up Obama's view on role of government

Wonk|Fix: Chris Cillizza and Ezra Klein preview the debate

Explore voter ID laws in all 50 states

"The Poll Manipulator" is here!

The first presidential debate explained - in 6 charts

8 Senate candidates whose third quarter reports matter

Why House Democrats are campaigning against the tea party

Republican brand: Still 'dog food'

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* A new Marquette Law School poll of likely Wisconsin voters shows that President Obama continues to hold a double-digit advantage over Mitt Romney in the Badger State. Obama leads Romney 53 percent to 42 percent in the survey, after leading Romney 54 percent to 40 percent in the previous Marquette poll, conducted in mid-September. In the Wisconsin Senate race, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) holds a slight lead over former governor Tommy Thompson (R). Baldwin leads Thompson 48 percent to 44 percent, after leading 50 percent to 41 percent in the previous survey. 

* Former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) raised $2.2 million for his Arizona Senate campaign during the third quarter, a haul that is double what he brought in last quarter. His opponent Rep. Jeff Flake (R) hasn't yet released his third quarter number. 

* Romney pitches himself as the better candidate on economic issues in a new TV ad. "We should measure our compassion by how many of our fellow Americans are able to get good paying jobs, not by how many are on welfare," says Romney, who addresses the camera directly.

* A new Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad ties Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.) to a property management company that the ad's narrator says "ignored fire codes and hounded tenants."

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* A Chipotle restaurant manager says excitement prompted the facial expression made in a Monday photo with Romney that received widespread attention. "It's a facial expression I do when I'm excited," he explained. I [did that] when I met Nicki Minaj. It's like, 'Ah, it's them, right there in front of you! They're not from another world.'"

* Former vice president Dick Cheney will attend a Romney fundraiser on Oct. 11, the same day as the debate between Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Vice President Biden.

* So what fueled former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's (D) high-energy speech at the Democratic National Convention? A democracy high, as it turns out. "I did not have any Red Bull. I was not, I didn't have any, you know, medication. I was high on democracy," Granholm said. 

* Good news for Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio): The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is scrapping its $240,000 TV buy in the Cleveland media market. Businesswoman Joyce Healy-Abrams (D) is challenging Gibbs in the 7th District. 

THE FIX MIX:

(Dramatic) Spongebob.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



672 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


35 questions from the 99 percent


BYLINE: Harold Meyerson


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 809 words


Will the questions in the presidential debates reflect the concerns of the Beltway and financial elites, or those of the 99 percent?

Plenty of questions would, of course, rightly reflect the concerns of both groups: questions about war and peace, the deployment of American forces, the right to marry, school quality. But a number of questions related to the top 1 percent's rise over the rest of our citizenry are simply not part of standard Beltway discourse, and asking them would require some outside-of-the-box thinking from the debate moderators. Herewith, a few helpful suggestions.

The hot topic here in the Beltway is Simpson-Bowles , which is shorthand for "how much pain are you willing to inflict on the American people to get to a balanced budget?" That's a question that surely should be asked. But given that our country is so deep in the red because government has assumed much of the debt that ordinary Americans took on over the past quarter-century, and that ordinary Americans took on that debt because they were offered loans when their incomes stopped rising, how about some questions that touch on the most important development in the nation's economy for the past several decades: the stagnation and decline of household income?

I'd like to hear both President Obama's and Mitt Romney's take on what's behind this epochal shift in the U.S. economy. Why have wages gone nowhere while productivity and profits have increased? Is globalization to blame? If so, does that call for changes in our trade policy with nations such as China? Is the way to increase competitiveness in a global economy to reduce our wage levels to those in the developing world? If so, how low should we go?

Most American jobs are not in competition with those in Chinese factories. Waiters, carpenters, truckers and nurses don't have their wage levels set by their counterparts in Chengdu. But their wages have stagnated as well. What's behind that? Would full employment help workers bid up their wages? Should the Federal Reserve seek to boost employment during downturns, as its recent actions have sought to do, or should it focus solely on inflation even when none is on the horizon? Has the near-total disappearance of collective bargaining from the private-sector economy played a role in income stagnation? Should the government try to make collective bargaining more widespread? If not, what are the candidates' scenarios for increasing incomes in the private sector?

Americans' incomes are not keeping pace with the rising costs of medical care and higher education. Should the government be able to bargain with pharmaceutical companies over the price of prescription drugs? Are medical specialists overpaid? Should the government do more to hasten the shift from fee-for-service medical care to integrated group care? As to colleges, should the federal government increase its financial aid to students? Should it set a tuition and fee threshold at colleges and universities, and deny all grants and aid to those institutions that exceed it?

Has the growth of Wall Street been a boon or a bane? Should we reenact the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, as even former Citicorp chief executive Sandy Weill has advocated? In moving toward a balanced budget, should the United States enact a financial transactions tax? Is the phenomenon of the wealthy sheltering income in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands a problem that the federal government should address? Is the solution to lower our taxes to Cayman-like rates? Or should we enact a special tax on Americans' income sheltered in such places?

Is CEO pay out of whack? Are "golden parachutes" a good thing? Have corporate boards done a good job of setting pay rates for top executives? Should there be public or employee representatives on the boards of corporations over a certain size, or on their executive compensation committees?

Does government spending on the military that takes place within the United States stimulate the economy? Does government spending on non-military projects within the United States stimulate the economy? If the answer to the second question differs from the answer to the first, explain.

Why has intergenerational mobility in the United States declined? Why is there more in Europe? Why has life expectancy for whites who haven't graduated from high school declined over the past 25 years, while it has risen for everyone else? Is the American economy less fair than it used to be? Do ordinary Americans have the opportunities that their parents and grandparents once did? If not, who's to blame?

These questions do not frequently pop up in the chatter of well-heeled Washington, but they bear directly on the lives of most Americans. It would be nice to hear a few answered in the coming debates.

meyersonh@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



673 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 7:15 PM EST


8 Senate candidates whose third quarter reports matter;
Fundraising reports will start rolling in any day now. Here are the ones you should watch for.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake;Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 859 words


All eyes in the political world are fixed on tonight's debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. But elsewhere, House and Senate candidates are feverishly tallying their fundraising numbers.

The third quarter - the last full quarter before the November election - came to a close at midnight Monday, which means we'll soon know who raised how much for the stretch run of the 2012 campaign.

What are the numbers that really matter?

Below, The Fix lays out eight Senate candidates who have plenty at stake in their third-quarter reports, along with a reasonable fundraising goal for each of them:

* Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.): Akin committed his "legitimate rape" gaffe shortly after the August primary, and the amount of money he was able to raise thereafter will be telling. Akin is not a strong fundraiser - he pulled in just $41,000 in the first 18 days of July - but controversy can help a candidate raise money if his or her base rallies to his side. The problem for Akin is that's generally more the case with tea party conservatives than with social conservatives, and Akin is much more the latter. Akin needs a big number, though, especially considering his party still isn't spending money to help his campaign and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has raised at least $2.3 million the last two quarters.

Fearless goal: $1.5 million

* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.): Brown has raised big sums himself, but Elizabeth Warren (D) has put up record quarter after record quarter, bringing her to near parity with Brown when it comes to cash on hand. Through mid-August, Brown had about $14 million in the bank to Warren's $12 million. With a pact curbing outside groups still in effect, candidate money will matter even more down the stretch in the Bay State. Locked in a tight race that appears to be trending slightly for Warren, Brown can hardly afford to be badly outpaced again.

Fearless goal: $6.5 million

* Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R): Fundraising has not been Thompson's strong suit this cycle. After a bruising primary depleted his already modest coffers, he had to hunker down and re-focus on raising cash. A Thompson aide said he will report $1.7 million to $2 million for the third quarter. Campaign 101 dictates that you always low-ball estimates in the press in advance of reporting your totals.

Fearless goal: $2 million

* Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): The Connecticut congressman isn't the favorite he once was, and a lot of it has to do with money. Republican Linda McMahon is likely to spend tens of millions of dollars on her campaign (she spent $50 million in her 2010 campaign for the state's other Senate seat), which means Murphy will have a hard time competing. He needs as much as he can get. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has lent some aid, but candidates themselves always get the best ad rates, and Murphy needs to demonstrate that he hasn't been totally knocked off his game.

Fearless goal: $1.7 million

* Former senator George Allen (R-Va.): Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine (D) has been winning the fundraising battle throughout their campaign, but polling has remained close. That has started to change in recent weeks, though, with Kaine asserting a lead in most polls. A great way for Allen to fight back would be to win his first fundraising quarter of the election cycle.

Fearless goal: $2.4 million 

* Former Maine governor Angus King (I): King has clearly lost momentum in his race, and he doesn't have a national party apparatus to back him up. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending money against Republican Charlie Summers, but won't say whether it's endorsing King or Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill. The DSCC is still in a tough spot, and King doesn't have a huge war chest to join the fight, having raised just $725,000 in the second quarter with just half a million in the bank. He could really use a sizeable bump in fundraising to ward off a fast-emerging threat from Summers.

Fearless goal: $1.2 million

* Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.): What once looked like a reach is looking more like a serious opportunity for Democrats to make an unlikely pickup. And that means more pressure on Donnelly to put up a strong quarter. He raised $900,000 in the second quarter. He'll want to easily clear seven digits this time around to keep Democrats enthusiastic about his chances.

Fearless goal: $1.4 million

* Former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona (D): Carmona turned heads when he edged out Rep. Jeff Flake (R) in the second quarter. And Flake had to spend more money in his primary against self-funder Wil Cardon than he would have liked. But the well-funded Club For Growth is on Flake's side, in addition to other Republican outside groups. Carmona will need to show he can repeat his successful quarter once again. 

Fearless goal: $1.5 million


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



674 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 3:00 PM EST


What Ann Romney tells Mitt before a debate: 'He's great. He's competent';
"I tell him, you know, he is who he is," she said. "He's great. He's competent. He's experienced. He's done this."


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 215 words


Ann Romney tells the Denver Post what she says to her husband just before a debate, like the one he faces tonight with President Obama.  

"I tell him, you know, he is who he is," she said. "He's great. He's competent. He's experienced. He's done this. He's fantastic. I love him. Go! Just all those encouraging words." No policy: "I don't weigh in on that."

She may not get into the substance, but the New York Times adds that Ann Romney plays an active role in Mitt's debate performances. 

During campaign debates, Mr. Romney routinely looks to his wife after delivering answers to gauge her reactions, sometimes conferring with her during commercial breaks. After Mr. Romney gave Newt Gingrich a drubbing during a primary season debate, Mrs. Romney telegraphed her views in a brief conversation: enough. Mr. Romney had made his point, an adviser recalled.

As Ann Romney said on CNN Tuesday, "He has to find where I am. And - he just - he needs just that connection. And almost after every answer that he gives, he'll find me in the audience, to see, 'Was that good? Was that okay?'"

First lady Michelle Obama told CNN that she offers "positive reinforcement" but  doesn't give her husband advice: "He doesn't need much advice. I mean, he's been doing this for quite some time. So he knows the job."


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



675 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 3, 2012 Wednesday 2:22 PM EST


Biden's claim that the Romney tax plan would raise Social Security taxes;
Romney has provided few details about his tax plan. Is the vice president taking liberties in his interpretation?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1099 words


"Their plan on Social Security, the one they have now, would raise taxes on your Social Security. Right now the majority of seniors, over 50 percent, pay zero income tax on their Social Security benefit. You have another group that pays no more than half - income tax on half of that. And you have another group that pays income tax on 15 percent. Well, if Governor Romney's plan goes into effect, it can mean that everyone - every one of you, would be paying more on - taxes on your Social Security. The average senior would have to pay $460 a year more in tax for their Social Security. Ladies and gentlemen, that's why these - while these guys are out there having - hemorrhaging tax cuts for the super-wealthy."

- Vice President Biden, speech at Boca Raton, Fla., Sept. 28, 2012

 "The Romney/Ryan plan could raise taxes on seniors by approximately $500 a year - all to support tax cuts for multi-millionaires. Send an eCard to say that's just not right."

- Obama Web site

Cue the scary music. Having repeatedly - misleadingly - beaten up the GOP presidential ticket for its plan to overhaul Medicare, Vice President Biden traveled to Florida last week to allege that Mitt Romney plans to raise taxes on Social Security benefits.

 The Romney campaign insists that this is false and that Romney has no plan to raise anyone's taxes. We will note that the Obama Web site simply says Romney "could" do this, but the more enthusiastic vice president repeatedly says it "would" happen. So how does Biden figure this?

The Facts

 The root of this assertion is Romney's still-vague plan to cut tax rates by 20 percent and make up any lost revenue by removing tax preferences and loopholes. The problem is that the most comprehensive study, by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, found that the math is impossible - there are just not enough tax preferences for the wealthy to make the plan revenue neutral without also raising taxes on the middle class. (The study was based on what few details have been released on the Romney plan.)

The Romney campaign has disputed the study without ever explaining how it would make the numbers add up. In fact, other studies cited by the campaign actually undercut its assertion that the plan is workable. Politically, of course, no lawmaker would support a plan that would raise taxes on the middle class while cutting them for the wealthy, so presumably Romney would modify his tax plan if he were elected president. But in campaign mode, he does not want to admit any error.

 The Obama campaign relies on the Tax Policy Center report as its template for producing Biden's $460 figure. First, using Joint Committee on Taxation data, it calculates that the average tax savings from excluding some or all Social Security benefits is $987 for seniors making less than $200,000. (For couples, Social Security is tax-free when income is below $32,000, up to 50 percent is taxable between $32,000 and $44,000, and up to 85 percent is taxable over $44,000.)

The campaign then reduces that figure by 20 percent because Romney would cut rates by that amount. Finally, it multiplies that by 58 percent because the Tax Policy Center concluded that "revenue neutrality would require eliminating 58 percent of total tax expenditures for these households."

 Presto, $460!

 But notice that this is an average of an average for a provision that Romney insists he will never implement. The exact interplay for individuals is difficult to predict. (A fact sheet provided by the Obama campaign does provide calculations for various income groups.)

The Tax Policy Center also says that the average increase in taxes for everyone making under $200,000 is $500.

"Romney has not proposed to do that, and we have not argued that Romney will do that," said William Gale of the Brookings Institution, one of the study's co-authors. "This is not a Tax Policy Center calculation, but it is consistent with our stuff."

After the Tax Policy Center study was released, Donald Marron, director of the center, cautioned that the Obama campaign was overinterpreting its findings:

"I don't interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed. Instead, I view it as showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives."

 The Romney campaign insists that its plan for Social Security "does not include any changes in Social Security for anyone who is in or near retirement." But the statement refers to Romney's Social Security plan and does not directly answer the question about whether the taxation of Social Security benefits would be altered as part of his tax proposal. (UPDATE: The Romney campaign says that this statement should be read as including a rejection of any tax increase on Social Security benefits.)

 Generally, the Romney campaign has not been explicit on this point. In a YouTube video of a Paul Ryan town hall, posted by BuzzFeed, Romney's running mate said there was "plenty of fiscal room" in the Romney tax plan to keep tax deductions for home mortgages, charitable contributions and employer-provided health care as "important preferences for middle-class taxpayers." He did not mention keeping Social Security benefits from taxation.

And in an interview with a Denver television station this week, Romney indicated that he would place a cap of $17,000 on all deductions. This would not require singling out specific deductions, but he did not specifically mention the exclusion for Social Security benefits. "You could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others - your health-care deduction," he said.

The Pinocchio Test

 Given Romney's lack of specifics in his tax plan - and legitimate questions about whether the math adds up - it is certainly fair game for the Obama campaign to point out contradictions or trade-offs.

 The campaign's literature tends to say such tax increases "could" happen. But Biden especially goes too far by declaring that this "would" happen, as if this were an actual proposal put on the table by the Romney campaign. It certainly hasn't been officially taken off the table - but that's not the same thing at all.

 Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



676 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 3, 2012 Wednesday
Regional Edition


35 questions from the 99 percent


BYLINE: Harold Meyerson


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A21


LENGTH: 808 words


Will the questions in the presidential debates reflect the concerns of the Beltway and financial elites, or those of the 99 percent?

Plenty of questions would, of course, rightly reflect the concerns of both groups: questions about war and peace, the deployment of American forces, the right to marry, school quality. But a number of questions related to the top 1 percent's rise over the rest of our citizenry are simply not part of standard Beltway discourse, and asking them would require some outside-of-the-box thinking from the debate moderators. Herewith, a few helpful suggestions.

The hot topic here in the Beltway is Simpson-Bowles , which is shorthand for "how much pain are you willing to inflict on the American people to get to a balanced budget?" That's a question that surely should be asked. But given that our country is so deep in the red because government has assumed much of the debt that ordinary Americans took on over the past quarter-century, and that ordinary Americans took on that debt because they were offered loans when their incomes stopped rising, how about some questions that touch on the most important development in the nation's economy for the past several decades: the stagnation and decline of household income?

I'd like to hear both President Obama's and Mitt Romney's take on what's behind this epochal shift in the U.S. economy. Why have wages gone nowhere while productivity and profits have increased? Is globalization to blame? If so, does that call for changes in our trade policy with nations such as China? Is the way to increase competitiveness in a global economy to reduce our wage levels to those in the developing world? If so, how low should we go?

Most American jobs are not in competition with those in Chinese factories. Waiters, carpenters, truckers and nurses don't have their wage levels set by their counterparts in Chengdu. But their wages have stagnated as well. What's behind that? Would full employment help workers bid up their wages? Should the Federal Reserve seek to boost employment during downturns, as its recent actions have sought to do, or should it focus solely on inflation even when none is on the horizon? Has the near-total disappearance of collective bargaining from the private-sector economy played a role in income stagnation? Should the government try to make collective bargaining more widespread? If not, what are the candidates' scenarios for increasing incomes in the private sector?

Americans' incomes are not keeping pace with the rising costs of medical care and higher education. Should the government be able to bargain with pharmaceutical companies over the price of prescription drugs? Are medical specialists overpaid? Should the government do more to hasten the shift from fee-for-service medical care to integrated group care? As to colleges, should the federal government increase its financial aid to students? Should it set a tuition and fee threshold at colleges and universities, and deny all grants and aid to those institutions that exceed it?

Has the growth of Wall Street been a boon or a bane? Should we reenact the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, as even former Citicorp chief executive Sandy Weill has advocated? In moving toward a balanced budget, should the United States enact a financial transactions tax? Is the phenomenon of the wealthy sheltering income in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands a problem that the federal government should address? Is the solution to lower our taxes to Cayman-like rates? Or should we enact a special tax on Americans' income sheltered in such places?

Is CEO pay out of whack? Are "golden parachutes" a good thing? Have corporate boards done a good job of setting pay rates for top executives? Should there be public or employee representatives on the boards of corporations over a certain size, or on their executive compensation committees?

Does government spending on the military that takes place within the United States stimulate the economy? Does government spending on non-military projects within the United States stimulate the economy? If the answer to the second question differs from the answer to the first, explain.

Why has intergenerational mobility in the United States declined? Why is there more in Europe? Why has life expectancy for whites who haven't graduated from high school declined over the past 25 years, while it has risen for everyone else? Is the American economy less fair than it used to be? Do ordinary Americans have the opportunities that their parents and grandparents once did? If not, who's to blame?

These questions do not frequently pop up in the chatter of well-heeled Washington, but they bear directly on the lives of most Americans. It would be nice to hear a few answered in the coming debates.

meyersonh@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



677 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Theater Shooting Survivor Makes an Appeal on Guns


BYLINE: By ERICA GOODE


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 13


LENGTH: 557 words


Stephen Barton was supposed to spend the fall teaching English in Russia on a Fulbright fellowship. But shortly after midnight on July 20, a gunman in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., derailed those plans.

Still recovering from the wounds he sustained when the gunman opened fire that night, killing 12 and injuring dozens more, Mr. Barton has decided to devote his energies this fall to something entirely different: Trying to get the presidential candidates to address the touchy issue of guns and gun violence.

In a television advertisement to begin airing on Monday, Mr. Barton, seated in an empty movie theater, tells viewers that despite the injuries from 25 shotgun pellets that embedded themselves in his face and neck, he was lucky.

"In the next four years, 48,000 Americans won't be so lucky, because they'll be murdered with guns in the next president's term, enough to fill over 200 theaters," Mr. Barton, 22, says in the advertisement. "So when you watch the presidential debates, ask yourself, 'Who has a plan to stop gun violence?'"

The advertisement will appear in Colorado and on cable stations in Washington and other cities across the country, said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of more than 725 mayors that is sponsoring the ad as part of its "Demand a Plan" campaign.

After the shooting spree in Aurora, both presidential candidates offered their condolences to the victims and their families. President Obama traveled to Aurora to visit the injured. Mitt Romney said, "Our hearts break with the sadness of this unspeakable tragedy."

But any discussion of how to prevent gun violence has been noticeably absent in presidential campaigns that have focused on the economy and foreign policy issues.

Both candidates have backed gun control measures in the past, Mr. Obama as a legislator and Mr. Romney as governor of Massachusetts, where he raised the fee for gun licenses and signed a ban on assault weapons.

But at a time when national surveys show waning support among Americans for tougher gun laws and when politicians who broach the issue face swift attack by the National Rifle Association and other gun groups, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have instead stressed their support for Second Amendment rights.

Mr. Barton, who graduated from Syracuse University in May and had stopped in Aurora for a few days while on a cross-country bicycle trip, said that before the shooting, he had followed the presidential campaign from a distance.

But what happened that night at the theater made it much more personal.

"I couldn't sit back and be just frustrated at the direction of the discourse or the lack of discourse," he said. "I guess I just felt some responsibility."

He deferred his Fulbright fellowship and, through contacts in Washington, signed up with the mayors' coalition, where he will spend the year working on gun control issues.

"We have this giant shooting and it's really sad that we can't even have a discussion about it," he said. "Really, more than anything, we just want to candidates to start talking about it in a way that's beyond just condolences."

And if the advertisement fails to convince the candidates, he added, "At least it might convince regular American citizens to think about it."

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/aurora-victim-pushes-gun-issue-with-new-ad/


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



678 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


In Business, Nondrinking Can Be a Costly Expense


BYLINE: By DOUGLAS QUENQUA


SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; WELL; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1204 words


As an ad-sales executive with Forbes magazine, Terry Lavin worked hard to earn his reputation as a dependable drinking buddy.

"I just basically rented space at P. J. Clarke's," he said, referring to the Midtown Manhattan watering hole. "I was always the last to leave, always had a cocktail in my hand."

In a business built on likability, the role helped him succeed. Until 2010, when he decided to give his body a break and quit drinking for six months. His health got better; his business did not.

"I would call guys I was friendly with, guys who had their hands on big ad budgets, to see if they wanted to go to happy hour or get something to eat," he recalled, "And they'd say: 'Are you drinking? No? Don't worry about it.' "

So much for the benefits of the sober life.

Even as three-martini lunches and whiskey-fueled staff meetings become harder to find outside of cable TV, plenty of American business rituals continue to revolve around alcohol. Whether it's courting a client, sketching out a deal or simply proving you're a team player, quaffing a round of beers is arguably more vital to many jobs than nailing a round of golf.

For professionals who abstain from alcohol - for health, religion, recovery or simple preference - it can sometimes seem harder to get ahead if you're not willing to throw one back.

"You're expected to drink, and drinking is part of what you do, and there's a little bit of circumspection if you say you don't do it," said Link Christin, director of a special treatment program for legal professionals started last year by Hazelden, a network of alcohol- and drug-rehabilitation centers based in Minnesota. "If you say you don't drink, you have to deal with the suspicion that you can't play the game."

To find that attitude in action, look no further than this year's presidential campaign. As a part of his pitch to voters that Mitt Romney, a teetotaler Mormon, is different from most Americans, President Obama has made a conspicuous display of his own regular-guy fondness for beer.

"Yesterday I went to the State Fair, and I had a pork chop and a beer," Mr. Obama boasted to an Iowa crowd in August the day after he closed down a beer kiosk so he could buy brews for himself and 10 other fairgoers. "And it was good. Today I just had a beer. I didn't get the pork chop. But the beer was good, too." The crowd rewarded him with chants of "Four more beers!"

When the public demanded that Mr. Obama release his recipes for home brews after he shared a bottle of one with a coffee shop patron in Knoxville, Iowa, the White House milked the moment by first demanding 25,000 signatures on a petition. (The White House eventually relented, releasing two recipes after just 12,000 signatures.)

It's hardly a new tactic among politicians. Edward M. Kennedy complained about the lack of alcohol in Jimmy Carter's White House as he prepared to challenge the president in the 1980 primaries. And it has become a pollsters' truism in recent years that voters choose the candidate they'd rather have a beer with. (The most recent nondrinker to take the White House, George W. Bush, at least made sure he was occasionally photographed holding a nonalcoholic O'Doul's.)

For less public figures, the notion that people who don't drink can't perform in business - or, worse, are somehow untrustworthy - can impede professional progress.

"There is a perception almost that you're impotent," said one nondrinker, an editor at a liquor-focused lifestyle magazine who asked not to be identified because many of his co-workers don't know he recently entered a 12-step program.

Professional disadvantages to sobriety range from the literal - the editor had to decline a potential promotion because it would have involved wine tasting - to subtle.

"I regularly turn down lunches and dinners with industry people that I would have jumped at in the past," the editor said. "I just can't go to dinner with a winemaker and tell him: 'No, thank you. I'm not tasting those.' "

One hardly has to work directly with alcohol to experience this. On Wall Street, where a "models and bottles" lifestyle prevails, those who don't drink "complain that they can't close a deal, can't even get into early negotiations because they won't engage in drinking behaviors," said John Crepsac, a New York City therapist who counsels Wall Street workers in recovery.

Social scientists refer to it as "social capital," the amount of economic potential to be harnessed from one's capacity to fit in.

"There were times I knew the guys were going out with customers that could help advance my career," said one nondrinking Wall Street trader who asked to remain anonymous because his employer doesn't allow staff members to talk to the media, "but it was just unspoken: 'Yeah, we won't invite him 'cause we'll probably get up to some drinking and he won't partake, so what's the point?' "

Of course, sobriety and success are not mutually exclusive. Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Larry Ellison are all lifetime abstainers. Whether or not he wins, Mr. Romney hasn't lacked for success, either.

And sober women might actually benefit from an old double standard. "Men are still expected to get together and go wild, but in some ways it's frowned upon if the woman engages in it," Dr. Crepsac said, noting that few of his female patients have complained that sobriety hurt their careers. "There are plenty of things for which women are discriminated against in the workplace, but this isn't one of them."

Still, research supports the idea that nondrinkers have a harder time climbing the corporate ladder. Multiple studies have shown that moderate drinkers earn more money than those who don't drink, though heavy drinkers earn less than moderate drinkers.

That pressure to perform can sometimes cause professionals in recovery to backslide. This is one reason that Hazelden created a support group especially for lawyers who are trying to stay sober.

"The pressure to bring in business at legal firms, to be a rainmaker, is greater than ever," said Mr. Christin, a former litigation lawyer and a recovered alcoholic. When someone must choose between supporting his or her family and having a glass of wine, it can be tough to stay the course, he said.

Teetotalers tend to develop strategies for socializing professionally without alcohol. Some will order a drink and simply leave it alone; others use humor to deflect unwanted attention. "I tell people I'm pregnant," said the Wall Street trader (a man).

Mr. Lavin, who is on leave from ad sales to write a book, advises asking for your drink in deceiving glassware. "People are much calmer if you're drinking a seltzer water out of a rocks glass," he said.

And there is justice to be had. Joe McKinsey, a former mortgage executive who opened a rehab clinic for executives in East Hampton, N.Y., after his own recovery, said it had taken only a few months of being sober at his old job to go from a target of ridicule to a confidant for those in trouble.

"Eventually you get people buttonholing you, asking, 'Do you think I have a problem?' " he said. "I became the go-to guy if you needed to have a private talk."

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/feeling-the-pressure-to-drink-for-work/


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: COLD SHOULDER: Terry Lavin sipping seltzer water at the Pig 'n' Whistle in Manhattan. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BEATRICE DE GEA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (D6)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



679 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Mr. Romney's Government Handout


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; EDITORIAL; Pg. 30


LENGTH: 625 words


The biggest beneficiaries of government largess are not those who struggle along on Social Security payments, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, or earned-income tax credits, despite what Mitt Romney has told his donors. Rather, they are those at the highest end of the income scale: government contractors, corporate farmers and very rich individuals who have figured out how to exploit the country's poorly written tax code for their benefit.

The latter group's most prominent member is Mr. Romney himself, whose astonishingly low tax rates are made possible by finding and using every loophole and flaw in the code. What his tax practices show is not illegal or unethical behavior, but rather the unfairness of a tax system that provides its most outlandish benefits only for the very, very rich and savvy. What is worse is that Mr. Romney has proposed making this profoundly dysfunctional system even more unfair.

Some of Mr. Romney's financial tactics are well-known, like structuring his income so that most of it is taxed at the low capital-gains rate of 15 percent, or stashing investments in tax havens like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. (The Times reported on Tuesday that the use of these havens not only saved him money, significantly enhancing his sizable retirement account, but also helped his company attract foreign investments.) But other strategies are so obscure that they are only known to the very few who worry about passing millions to their heirs without paying transfer taxes.

As Bloomberg News recently reported, Mr. Romney has managed to move nearly $100 million worth of assets into a trust for his heirs without paying any gift tax, which, like the estate tax, was established to ensure that society benefits from the dynastic transfer of great wealth. When he was running Bain Capital, the private equity firm, in 1998, he gave the trust shares of an Internet ad company, DoubleClick, in which Bain had invested, just before the company went public. The shares were worth little then, but insiders like Mr. Romney knew the company could flourish. After the company went public, the value of the shares went up tenfold. The trust then sold the shares, but their increased value escaped the gift tax because that tax applies just to the original value of the gift.

But that wasn't the only trick that Mr. Romney used, none of which are of any use to ordinary taxpayers. Exploiting a flaw in the tax code, he set up the trust so that he could pay the income taxes on the capital gains on DoubleClick's shares. Paying those taxes is another huge gift to his heirs, and this practice is widely used by the wealthy as another way to pass on money to another generation while avoiding gift or estate taxes. Earlier this year, President Obama proposed eliminating this loophole, but the idea went nowhere with Republicans in Congress.

Like most Republicans, Mr. Romney wants to eliminate the estate tax entirely, even though it currently applies only to estates of more than $10 million for a married couple. That would cost the treasury more than $1 trillion over a decade, but it would be a huge benefit for Mr. Romney's heirs and for the other 0.3 percent of estates rich enough to qualify for the tax. Getting rid of the estate tax would subvert the gift tax (it was established as a backstop, to keep estates from being passed on before death) and would spare the rich all this complicated ''estate planning,'' which is just a euphemism for avoiding the tax.

As Warren Buffett has said, the estate tax increases equality of opportunity and curbs the movement toward a plutocracy. Mr. Romney's plan to get rid of it, helping his family but few others, is one of the sharpest illustrations of his distance from ordinary Americans.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/opinion/mr-romneys-government-handout.html


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Editorial


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



680 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


Romney Ad Has New Take on Whether Obama Raised Taxes


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 451 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney said last month that President Obama had not raised taxes during his tenure, but a new ad asserts the opposite, maintaining the health care overhaul amounts to a tax.


Mitt Romney seems to have changed his mind about whether President Obama has already raised taxes.

At an event last month with Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney asserted- oddly, for him - that Mr. Obama had not increased taxes during his first term.

"I admit this," Mr. Romney said. "He has one thing he did not do in his first four years, he's said he's going to do in his next four years, which is to raise taxes."

But in a new television ad, Mr. Romney says exactly the opposite. The ad, titled "Already Has," asks the question: "Who will raise taxes on the middle class?" An announcer provides the answer.

"Barack Obama and the liberals already have," she says as the ad shows a picture of the president hugging Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former Democratic House speaker.

The ad asserts that Americans will pay higher taxes and higher prices for medicine because of Mr. Obama's health care overhaul. And it goes on to say that Democrats want to raise taxes by an additional $1 trillion, including on the middle class.

Mr. Romney's campaign appears to be basing the claim of higher health care taxes on the idea that the individual mandate included in the overhaul is a tax. The Supreme Court found the mandate constitutional by saying it was authorized as part of the government's taxing authority - a decision that Mr. Romney said at the time he disagreed with.

The ad - which Mr. Romney says at the end he approves - is the first to use the Republican campaign's new slogan. It concludes: "We can't afford four more years." It was not immediately clear where the ad was running.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he lowered taxes on the middle class during his tenure, pointing to the payroll tax cut and other reductions as evidence of his commitment to keeping taxes low for most Americans.

In an interview on "60 Minutes" on CBS last month, Mr. Obama said that the accusations from Mr. Romney and his Republican allies amounted to "a lot of rhetoric, but there aren't a lot of facts supporting it. Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes. I've cut taxes for middle-class families by an average of $3,600 for a typical family."

Fact-check organizations have said Mr. Obama's assertion is "mostly true."

Democrats are pushing to eliminate decade-long tax cuts for the wealthy, which Republicans oppose.

After Mr. Romney's comments last month, a campaign spokeswoman issued a statement saying that "President Obama has raised taxes on millions of middle-class Americans during his first term in office. Governor Romney was clearly communicating about an additional tax increase President Obama is proposing on American small businesses."


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



681 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


Mortgage Task Force Takes Aim at JPMorgan


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 2302 words



HIGHLIGHT: JPMorgan Chase is facing fresh claims related to Bear Stearns. | You can have too much money, at least if you're a private equity firm. | The S.E.C. and high-frequency trading. | Bain Capital's offshore arrangements limited Romney's tax bill -- and increased his income.


Mortgage Task Force Targets JPMorgan  |  Those financial crisis deals just keep coming back to haunt banks. Last week, Bank of America settled a lawsuit over its acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Now, JPMorgan Chase is facing fresh claims related to Bear Stearns.

The federal task force formed to investigate mortgage fraud has sued Bear Stearns and its lending unit, EMC Mortgage, the first case brought by the federal group, The New York Times reports. The civil lawsuit, according to The Times, cites "a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom."

The accusations are hardly new. A JPMorgan spokesman, Joseph Evangelisti, called them "recycled claims." But others, like Gerald H. Silk, a lawyer at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, welcomed the lawsuit. "The government's action represents a complete validation of the cases brought by investors," Mr. Silk said.

The government announced the resolution of another case on Monday: American Express agreed to refund $85 million to about 250,000 customers to settle accusations that it violated federal law in its marketing, billing and debt collection, The New York Times reports. The settlement is another milestone for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which recently reached a similar pact with Discover Financial Services, and also took action against Capital One over the summer.

Too Much Dry Powder  |  You can have too much money, at least if you are a private equity firm. The industry is sitting on a collective $1 trillion - money that investors may demand back if it's not used soon, writes Andrew Ross Sorkin in the DealBook column. The so-called dry powder could signal a surge of deal-making, if firms can find the right prey. Mr. Sorkin writes: "Some private equity firms have put the word out to Wall Street banks that they want to go 'elephant hunting' - seeking big deals worth as much as $10 billion - and are willing to pay a special bounty for bringing them acquisition targets." Of course, it could also signal a spate of bad deal-making as firms chase acquisitions.

Still, the industry keeps trying to drum up more money. Private equity firms amassed more than $64 billion from investors in the third quarter, 10 percent more than in the period a year earlier, Reuters reports, citing data from the research firm Preqin.

High-Frequency Trading Under a Microscope  |  How can we prevent blowups when high-speed traders rule the stock market? The Securities and Exchange Commission will discuss the issue at a conference on Tuesday in Washington. Among the panelists is Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer of BATS Global Markets. Though many are pushing for new rules for high-frequency trading, there is little agreement on what exactly those rules should be. The author Roger Lowenstein proposes in a column in The New York Times that "intraday trades should be taxed at 50 percent. And 'investments' that mature in 60 seconds should be regarded as, in effect, electronic errors - with any profit going to the government."

On the Agenda  |  Day two of the Value Investing Congress features David Einhorn at 10:30 a.m. At past conferences, Mr. Einhorn, the Greenlight Capital president, has showcased short-selling ideas, which have been known to move stocks. The subject of a recent New Yorker article, Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors, is on CNBC at 12:30 p.m. Larry Ellison, the Oracle chief executive, is on CNBC at 4:05.

Lawyers for Kazuo Okada, the ousted shareholder of Wynn Resorts, are appearing in a Nevada court on Tuesday to try to overturn the forced redemption of Mr. Okada's stake.

Bain Capital's Offshore Havens  |  They are the gifts that keep on giving. Bain Capital's offshore arrangements - which are "woven" into the fabric of the private equity firm's deal-making - not only limited Mitt Romney's tax bill, they also increased his income, according to The New York Times: "Some of the offshore entities enabled Bain-owned companies to sidestep certain taxes, increasing returns for Mr. Romney and other investors. Others helped Bain attract foreign investors and nonprofit institutions by insulating them from taxes, again augmenting Mr. Romney's bottom line, since he shared in management fees based on the size of each Bain fund."

Law Firms Woo Start-Up Clients  |  Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the half-century-old law firm, is trying to be hip and cool. The firm's new office in San Francisco has the look and feel of a start-up, part of a broader strategy to attract young technology companies to its fold, writes DealBook's Evelyn M. Rusli. Wilson Sonsini and its rivals are "offering free services, cozying up to incubators and writing blogs" in an effort to secure business that could pay off big down the road.

Merrill Looking to Pounce on Morgan Stanley  |  Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit is looking to poach brokers from the newly rebranded Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, The Wall Street Journal reports. The most sought-after financial advisers could make at least $1.5 million upfront plus deferred compensation for jumping ship, according to The Journal, which cites unidentified people familiar with Merrill's recruiting. Merrill Lynch, the newspaper says, is "pushing to capitalize on technological and reputational blows at Morgan Stanley."

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Washington Post Company Acquires Health Care Provider  |  The company run by Donald E. Graham agreed to buy a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare. WASHINGTON POST

3M to Buy Ceradyne for $860 Million  |  Ceradyne shareholders will receive $35 a share in cash through a tender offer that is expected to begin within the next two weeks, a 43 percent premium to the ceramics maker's closing price on Friday. DealBook »

Qantas to Buy Air Freight Company  |  The Australian airline Qantas agreed to buy 100 percent of Australian Air Express, Reuters reports. REUTERS

Glencore Buys Stake in Russian Port  | 
REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Moody's Says Tests Understate Needs of Spanish Banks  |  The credit rating agency Moody's said Spanish banks could require up to $135 billion in additional capital, almost twice the government's recent estimate. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Barclays Adds 2 New Members to Executive Committee  |  The British bank has added two new members to its executive committee as it continues to reshape itself in the wake of a rate-rigging scandal. DealBook »

The J. Aron Takeover of Goldman Sachs  |  When Goldman Sachs bought the commodities broker J. Aron & Company in 1981, the cultures clashed, but now J. Aron alumni control the elevator to the executive suite. DealBook »

The Bullish Case for Goldman Sachs  |  Shares of Goldman Sachs rose as much as 4 percent in trading on Monday morning, as investors considered a bullish argument for the firm that appeared in Barron's this weekend. DealBook »

What's It Like to Run Goldman Sachs?  |  In some ways, it's less challenging than running a small business, said the firm's Lloyd C. Blankfein. "As I'm listening to the entrepreneurs, I'm thinking, 'Gosh, could I do that?'" Mr. Blankfein said at an event in Long Beach, Calif., to honor graduates of Goldman's small-business program. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Low Volume Expected to Weigh on Equity Trading Revenue  |  According to an estimate by a JPMorgan Chase analyst, the volume of equity trading in the third quarter probably fell 14 percent compared with the period a year earlier. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Asian Investment Banks Feel a Lack of I.P.O.'s  |  An increase in other lines of business, like mergers and acquisitions and debt sales, has not offset the decline in I.P.O.'s in Hong Kong, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Would an Obama Presidency Be Better for Private Equity?  |  Fortune's Dan Primack writes that if Mitt Romney became president, "the appearance of conflicts could prompt regulators to unfurl new, largely artificial red tape." FORTUNE

Benefits of Diversity in Private Equity  |  Bloomberg News reports: "Private equity firms that are diverse or minority-owned achieved higher gains than the broader industry, according to a report today by the National Association of Investment Companies." BLOOMBERG NEWS

Carlyle's Brazil Strategy Centers on Consumer Goods  |  Fernando Borges, the head of the Carlyle Group's South American team, told Bloomberg News: "Our focus will keep being companies related to consumption, rising income and the growing middle class." BLOOMBERG NEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Elliott's Campaign Against BMC Advances as Company Explores a Sale  |  Elliott Management has made strides in its latest activist campaign against a technology company, as BMC Software has retained Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore a potential sale of itself, a person briefed on the matter told DealBook on Monday. DealBook »

How Institutional Money Changed Hedge Funds  |  Money from the "kind of staid institutions that hedgies once tried to be an alternative to" now represents the majority of the hedge fund industry's capital, leading some hedge funds to scale back risk-taking, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ackman Steps Up Pressure on General Growth  |  William Ackman, the hedge fund manager, reiterated on Monday his position that General Growth Properties, a Chicago-based mall operator, should consider selling itself to the Simon Property Group. DealBook »

Jana Partners Takes Aim at Fertilizer Company  |  Speaking at a conference in New York, Barry Rosenstein of Jana Partners urged Agrium, a Canadian fertilizer company, to spin off its retail business, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hedge Fund Manager Criticizes Splunk  |  Shares of Splunk, a data analytics company, fell on Monday as a hedge fund manager, Zack Buckley, made a case for betting against the stock, Reuters reports. REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

CVR Energy Looks to Raise $300 Million  |  The oil refiner CVR Energy, controlled by Carl C. Icahn, is forming a master limited partnership for certain assets after it failed to find a buyer, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Users  |  The Wall Street Journal reports: "To amp up the effectiveness of its ads, Facebook in recent months has begun allowing marketers to target ads at users based on the e-mail address and phone number they list on their profiles, or based on their surfing habits on other sites. It has also started selling ads that follow Facebook members beyond the confines of the social network." WALL STREET JOURNAL

Workday Sets Price Range for I.P.O.  |  Workday, a provider of cloud-based applications for human resources, said on Monday that it would seek to price its initial public offering at $21 to $24 a share. DealBook »

Investors Take a Shine to Enterprise Technology  |  The performance of I.P.O.'s like Palo Alto Networks and ServiceNow bodes well for Workday, The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

A Tepid Quarter for Venture-Backed I.P.O.'s  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Square Acquires a Design Agency  |  The mobile payments company Square has picked up the design agency 80/20, and "an office in SoHo," according to Jack Dorsey, Square's founder. 8020

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Whistle-Blower Lawyers Throw Support Behind Obama  |  Lawyers who represent whistle-blowers have made millions as the Obama administration cracks down on corporate fraud. Those who specialize in filing fraud claims with the federal government on behalf of clients with evidence of wrongdoing have raised more than $3 million for President Obama's re-election campaign, Eric Lipton writes in The New York Times. DealBook »

In Goldman Programmer Case, a Way Around Double Jeopardy  |  There is a significant loophole in the double jeopardy clause - known as the "dual sovereignty" doctrine - that permits different governments to pursue the same case, Peter J. Henning writes in the White Collar Watch column. DealBook »

Foreign Corruption Offers Big Business for Law Firms  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

More Charges for Former Madoff Employees  |  According to the expanded charges, Bernard L. Madoff's conspiracy to defraud investors started about two decades earlier than previously alleged, Reuters reports. REUTERS

SAC Manager Said to Be Placed on Leave  |  Michael Steinberg, whose name recently emerged as an unindicted co-conspirator in the government's insider trading case against SAC Capital, is now on paid leave, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. WALL STREET JOURNAL

When 'Expert Advice' Can Lead to Legal Trouble  |  "The lawyers have signed off on the deal" or "the accountants are supporting our tax position" may seem like a reasonable defense, but it must accurately reflect professional advice that directors can rely on in good faith, writes Michael W. Peregrine, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery. DealBook »

Dynegy Emerges From Bankruptcy  |  The energy company Dynegy said on Monday that it had exited Chapter 11, with plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. REUTERS

Volcker to Appear Before British Bank Investigators  |  Andrew Tyrie, chairman of Britain's Commission of Banking Standards, says in a column in The Financial Times that Paul A. Volcker is set to speak before the panel on Oct. 17. FINANCIAL TIMES

Former IndyMac Chief Settles S.E.C. Case  |  Michael Perry, a former head of the failed mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp, is paying $80,000 to resolve accusations that he misrepresented the company's financial condition, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



682 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


Mortgage Task Force Targets JPMorgan


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 2302 words



HIGHLIGHT: JPMorgan Chase is facing fresh claims related to Bear Stearns. | You can have too much money, at least if you're a private equity firm. | The S.E.C. and high-frequency trading. | Bain Capital's offshore arrangements limited Romney's tax bill -- and increased his income.


Mortgage Task Force Targets JPMorgan  |  Those financial crisis deals just keep coming back to haunt banks. Last week, Bank of America settled a lawsuit over its acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Now, JPMorgan Chase is facing fresh claims related to Bear Stearns.

The federal task force formed to investigate mortgage fraud has sued Bear Stearns and its lending unit, EMC Mortgage, the first case brought by the federal group, The New York Times reports. The civil lawsuit, according to The Times, cites "a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom."

The accusations are hardly new. A JPMorgan spokesman, Joseph Evangelisti, called them "recycled claims." But others, like Gerald H. Silk, a lawyer at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, welcomed the lawsuit. "The government's action represents a complete validation of the cases brought by investors," Mr. Silk said.

The government announced the resolution of another case on Monday: American Express agreed to refund $85 million to about 250,000 customers to settle accusations that it violated federal law in its marketing, billing and debt collection, The New York Times reports. The settlement is another milestone for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which recently reached a similar pact with Discover Financial Services, and also took action against Capital One over the summer.

Too Much Dry Powder  |  You can have too much money, at least if you are a private equity firm. The industry is sitting on a collective $1 trillion - money that investors may demand back if it's not used soon, writes Andrew Ross Sorkin in the DealBook column. The so-called dry powder could signal a surge of deal-making, if firms can find the right prey. Mr. Sorkin writes: "Some private equity firms have put the word out to Wall Street banks that they want to go 'elephant hunting' - seeking big deals worth as much as $10 billion - and are willing to pay a special bounty for bringing them acquisition targets." Of course, it could also signal a spate of bad deal-making as firms chase acquisitions.

Still, the industry keeps trying to drum up more money. Private equity firms amassed more than $64 billion from investors in the third quarter, 10 percent more than in the period a year earlier, Reuters reports, citing data from the research firm Preqin.

High-Frequency Trading Under a Microscope  |  How can we prevent blowups when high-speed traders rule the stock market? The Securities and Exchange Commission will discuss the issue at a conference on Tuesday in Washington. Among the panelists is Chris Isaacson, chief operating officer of BATS Global Markets. Though many are pushing for new rules for high-frequency trading, there is little agreement on what exactly those rules should be. The author Roger Lowenstein proposes in a column in The New York Times that "intraday trades should be taxed at 50 percent. And 'investments' that mature in 60 seconds should be regarded as, in effect, electronic errors - with any profit going to the government."

On the Agenda  |  Day two of the Value Investing Congress features David Einhorn at 10:30 a.m. At past conferences, Mr. Einhorn, the Greenlight Capital president, has showcased short-selling ideas, which have been known to move stocks. The subject of a recent New Yorker article, Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors, is on CNBC at 12:30 p.m. Larry Ellison, the Oracle chief executive, is on CNBC at 4:05.

Lawyers for Kazuo Okada, the ousted shareholder of Wynn Resorts, are appearing in a Nevada court on Tuesday to try to overturn the forced redemption of Mr. Okada's stake.

Bain Capital's Offshore Havens  |  They are the gifts that keep on giving. Bain Capital's offshore arrangements - which are "woven" into the fabric of the private equity firm's deal-making - not only limited Mitt Romney's tax bill, they also increased his income, according to The New York Times: "Some of the offshore entities enabled Bain-owned companies to sidestep certain taxes, increasing returns for Mr. Romney and other investors. Others helped Bain attract foreign investors and nonprofit institutions by insulating them from taxes, again augmenting Mr. Romney's bottom line, since he shared in management fees based on the size of each Bain fund."

Law Firms Woo Start-Up Clients  |  Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the half-century-old law firm, is trying to be hip and cool. The firm's new office in San Francisco has the look and feel of a start-up, part of a broader strategy to attract young technology companies to its fold, writes DealBook's Evelyn M. Rusli. Wilson Sonsini and its rivals are "offering free services, cozying up to incubators and writing blogs" in an effort to secure business that could pay off big down the road.

Merrill Looking to Pounce on Morgan Stanley  |  Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit is looking to poach brokers from the newly rebranded Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, The Wall Street Journal reports. The most sought-after financial advisers could make at least $1.5 million upfront plus deferred compensation for jumping ship, according to The Journal, which cites unidentified people familiar with Merrill's recruiting. Merrill Lynch, the newspaper says, is "pushing to capitalize on technological and reputational blows at Morgan Stanley."

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Washington Post Company Acquires Health Care Provider  |  The company run by Donald E. Graham agreed to buy a majority stake in Celtic Healthcare. WASHINGTON POST

3M to Buy Ceradyne for $860 Million  |  Ceradyne shareholders will receive $35 a share in cash through a tender offer that is expected to begin within the next two weeks, a 43 percent premium to the ceramics maker's closing price on Friday. DealBook »

Qantas to Buy Air Freight Company  |  The Australian airline Qantas agreed to buy 100 percent of Australian Air Express, Reuters reports. REUTERS

Glencore Buys Stake in Russian Port  | 
REUTERS

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Moody's Says Tests Understate Needs of Spanish Banks  |  The credit rating agency Moody's said Spanish banks could require up to $135 billion in additional capital, almost twice the government's recent estimate. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Barclays Adds 2 New Members to Executive Committee  |  The British bank has added two new members to its executive committee as it continues to reshape itself in the wake of a rate-rigging scandal. DealBook »

The J. Aron Takeover of Goldman Sachs  |  When Goldman Sachs bought the commodities broker J. Aron & Company in 1981, the cultures clashed, but now J. Aron alumni control the elevator to the executive suite. DealBook »

The Bullish Case for Goldman Sachs  |  Shares of Goldman Sachs rose as much as 4 percent in trading on Monday morning, as investors considered a bullish argument for the firm that appeared in Barron's this weekend. DealBook »

What's It Like to Run Goldman Sachs?  |  In some ways, it's less challenging than running a small business, said the firm's Lloyd C. Blankfein. "As I'm listening to the entrepreneurs, I'm thinking, 'Gosh, could I do that?'" Mr. Blankfein said at an event in Long Beach, Calif., to honor graduates of Goldman's small-business program. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Low Volume Expected to Weigh on Equity Trading Revenue  |  According to an estimate by a JPMorgan Chase analyst, the volume of equity trading in the third quarter probably fell 14 percent compared with the period a year earlier. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Asian Investment Banks Feel a Lack of I.P.O.'s  |  An increase in other lines of business, like mergers and acquisitions and debt sales, has not offset the decline in I.P.O.'s in Hong Kong, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Would an Obama Presidency Be Better for Private Equity?  |  Fortune's Dan Primack writes that if Mitt Romney became president, "the appearance of conflicts could prompt regulators to unfurl new, largely artificial red tape." FORTUNE

Benefits of Diversity in Private Equity  |  Bloomberg News reports: "Private equity firms that are diverse or minority-owned achieved higher gains than the broader industry, according to a report today by the National Association of Investment Companies." BLOOMBERG NEWS

Carlyle's Brazil Strategy Centers on Consumer Goods  |  Fernando Borges, the head of the Carlyle Group's South American team, told Bloomberg News: "Our focus will keep being companies related to consumption, rising income and the growing middle class." BLOOMBERG NEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Elliott's Campaign Against BMC Advances as Company Explores a Sale  |  Elliott Management has made strides in its latest activist campaign against a technology company, as BMC Software has retained Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore a potential sale of itself, a person briefed on the matter told DealBook on Monday. DealBook »

How Institutional Money Changed Hedge Funds  |  Money from the "kind of staid institutions that hedgies once tried to be an alternative to" now represents the majority of the hedge fund industry's capital, leading some hedge funds to scale back risk-taking, The Wall Street Journal writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Ackman Steps Up Pressure on General Growth  |  William Ackman, the hedge fund manager, reiterated on Monday his position that General Growth Properties, a Chicago-based mall operator, should consider selling itself to the Simon Property Group. DealBook »

Jana Partners Takes Aim at Fertilizer Company  |  Speaking at a conference in New York, Barry Rosenstein of Jana Partners urged Agrium, a Canadian fertilizer company, to spin off its retail business, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Hedge Fund Manager Criticizes Splunk  |  Shares of Splunk, a data analytics company, fell on Monday as a hedge fund manager, Zack Buckley, made a case for betting against the stock, Reuters reports. REUTERS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

CVR Energy Looks to Raise $300 Million  |  The oil refiner CVR Energy, controlled by Carl C. Icahn, is forming a master limited partnership for certain assets after it failed to find a buyer, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Users  |  The Wall Street Journal reports: "To amp up the effectiveness of its ads, Facebook in recent months has begun allowing marketers to target ads at users based on the e-mail address and phone number they list on their profiles, or based on their surfing habits on other sites. It has also started selling ads that follow Facebook members beyond the confines of the social network." WALL STREET JOURNAL

Workday Sets Price Range for I.P.O.  |  Workday, a provider of cloud-based applications for human resources, said on Monday that it would seek to price its initial public offering at $21 to $24 a share. DealBook »

Investors Take a Shine to Enterprise Technology  |  The performance of I.P.O.'s like Palo Alto Networks and ServiceNow bodes well for Workday, The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column writes. WALL STREET JOURNAL

VENTURE CAPITAL »

A Tepid Quarter for Venture-Backed I.P.O.'s  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Square Acquires a Design Agency  |  The mobile payments company Square has picked up the design agency 80/20, and "an office in SoHo," according to Jack Dorsey, Square's founder. 8020

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Whistle-Blower Lawyers Throw Support Behind Obama  |  Lawyers who represent whistle-blowers have made millions as the Obama administration cracks down on corporate fraud. Those who specialize in filing fraud claims with the federal government on behalf of clients with evidence of wrongdoing have raised more than $3 million for President Obama's re-election campaign, Eric Lipton writes in The New York Times. DealBook »

In Goldman Programmer Case, a Way Around Double Jeopardy  |  There is a significant loophole in the double jeopardy clause - known as the "dual sovereignty" doctrine - that permits different governments to pursue the same case, Peter J. Henning writes in the White Collar Watch column. DealBook »

Foreign Corruption Offers Big Business for Law Firms  | 
WALL STREET JOURNAL

More Charges for Former Madoff Employees  |  According to the expanded charges, Bernard L. Madoff's conspiracy to defraud investors started about two decades earlier than previously alleged, Reuters reports. REUTERS

SAC Manager Said to Be Placed on Leave  |  Michael Steinberg, whose name recently emerged as an unindicted co-conspirator in the government's insider trading case against SAC Capital, is now on paid leave, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. WALL STREET JOURNAL

When 'Expert Advice' Can Lead to Legal Trouble  |  "The lawyers have signed off on the deal" or "the accountants are supporting our tax position" may seem like a reasonable defense, but it must accurately reflect professional advice that directors can rely on in good faith, writes Michael W. Peregrine, a partner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery. DealBook »

Dynegy Emerges From Bankruptcy  |  The energy company Dynegy said on Monday that it had exited Chapter 11, with plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. REUTERS

Volcker to Appear Before British Bank Investigators  |  Andrew Tyrie, chairman of Britain's Commission of Banking Standards, says in a column in The Financial Times that Paul A. Volcker is set to speak before the panel on Oct. 17. FINANCIAL TIMES

Former IndyMac Chief Settles S.E.C. Case  |  Michael Perry, a former head of the failed mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp, is paying $80,000 to resolve accusations that he misrepresented the company's financial condition, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



683 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Ross Douthat)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


A Campaign Without a Plan


BYLINE: ROSS DOUTHAT


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 803 words



HIGHLIGHT: An immigration shift exposes the Romney campaign's lack of strategic thinking.


Yesterday, Mitt Romney finally stopped dodging a question he'd evaded for months, and stated that if elected president, he wouldn't undo the visas for younger illegal immigrants that President Obama made available by executive fiat earlier this year. It's a repositioning that's likely to be swallowed up by the coverage of tomorrow night's debate, but it's worth pausing over because of how perfectly it crystallizes the strategic ineffectiveness of the Romney campaign.

Immigration is an issue where Republican politicians are often urged to move to "the center" - that is, adopt a pro-amnesty position - in order to win over Hispanic voters alienated by anti-immigration rhetoric. At the same time, it's an issue where the more conservative, restrictionist position is often shared by a different bloc of swing voters: The kind of working class whites whose support Romney has been struggling (and struggling, and struggling) to win. There are potential political benefits, in other words, to branding yourself as the candidate of compassion toward illegal immigrants, as George W. Bush persistently did. But then again there are also potential benefits - sometimes greater ones, in my view - to taking a more restrictionist position and using the issue to portray the Democrats as beholden to their party's ethnic interest groups and out of step with blue collar Americans' concerns.

There's nothing whatsoever to be gained, however, by doing what Romney has done, which is to act evasive on a hot-button issue for months on end before finally, grudgingly, issuing a defensive quasi-endorsement of your opponent's gambit. When the White House announced its policy change, Romney could have attacked the president for bending the rule of law to suit the demands of Democratic coalition politics, or alternatively he could have embraced the DREAM Act himself to pivot away from the hard line he took during the Republican primary campaign. Either move, if finessed effectively, might have helped him with a crucial bloc of voters. But by doing neither, and basically ducking the issue until this late-in-the-game concession, he enabled the White House to reap all of the benefits of its backdoor amnesty without paying any political price at all.

You can see the same pattern in health care. Romney made a point, throughout the primary season, of standing by his Massachusetts health care plan: Indeed, Noam Scheiber has reported that one reason Stuart Stevens got the job running the campaign is that Stevens was the only consultant who promised Romney he could win the nomination without formally disavowing Romneycare. Now, I thought at the time that this was a mistake, and that Romney could have threaded the needle more effectively by disavowing parts of his health care bill while defending others. But that was the strategy they chose, and it actually worked: He won the Republican nomination without having to repudiate his signature policy accomplishment as governor.

You would think, then, that having taken this risk and succeeded, the Romney campaign would try to capitalize on their success by weaving his health care record, in some form, into their general election pitch. And every once in a while that has happened: Romney finds himself talking about health care in an interview, and he'll say something like, "don't forget - I got everybody in my state insured." But there's no consistency to this message, no policy substance that it's tied to, no sense that the people in Boston ever sat down and war-gamed out anything like a clear narrative on one of the most important domestic issues of our time. (Nor, on the other hand, has there been anything like a sustained critique of the president's health care law either.) Instead, the campaign's policy messaging seems entirely ad hoc: Now right-wing, now centrist, with no clear plan for how to actually shape the debate, rather than just reacting to it.

Running a presidential campaign and selling a consistent message isn't easy, obviously. But neither is it nearly as difficult as the Romney campaign has made it seem. You pick some issues that play well with your base, pick some issues where you want to move to the center, write a script with these choices in mind and do your best to stick to it. Of course events intervene and the script sometimes has to be rewritten. But on immigration, health care and indeed just about every topic worth mentioning, the Romney camp apparently decided that the weakness of the economy meant that they didn't need a clear script at all, and that they could get by with evasions and improvisations instead. On the evidence of current polling, they were wrong.



LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



684 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


The Caucus Click: Role of a Lifetime


BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 47 words



HIGHLIGHT: Zach Gonzales, left, and Dia Mohamed, both students at the University of Denver, stand in for President Obama and Mitt Romney during a dress rehearsal for Wednesday's presidential debate at the University of Denver.




LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



685 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


October 2, 2012 Tuesday


Ads Attack Wall Street Ties, No Matter How Flimsy


BYLINE: PETER LATTMAN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 1349 words



HIGHLIGHT: Candidates are trying to gain an edge by linking their opponents to bailouts and banking, no matter how flimsy the connection may be.


Wall Street has taken a beating this election season. Yet what is considered to be Wall Street may be surprising.

Take Keith J. Rothfus, a Republican candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania. A lawyer at a small firm, he specializes in drafting software-licensing agreements. While unglamorous, it helps pay the bills.

Among the clients he has represented is Bank of New York Mellon, which has a large presence in western Pennsylvania. Two commercials backed by Democratic groups are attacking Mr. Rothfus's relationship with his banking client.

"Millionaire Wall Street lawyer Keith Rothfus will fit right in in Washington," said the narrator of one of the ads. The spot shows a plunging stock market and a grim-looking Mr. Rothfus entering what looks to be a bank. Over ominous music, the narrator goes on: "As a wealthy attorney, Keith Rothfus represented a Wall Street bank that received a bailout from taxpayers."

In an interview, Mr. Rothfus called the ad "deceitful, shameful and outrageous." He said that while BNY Mellon took bailout funds, his work for the company - most of which predates Bank of New York's 2006 takeover of Mellon Financial of Pittsburgh - had no connection to the financial crisis.

"I'm a Stanwix Street lawyer, not a Wall Street lawyer," Mr. Rothfus said, referring to his firm's downtown Pittsburgh address. "I visited Wall Street once, in 1980, as a tourist at the New York Stock Exchange. If I'm a Wall Street lawyer, then the 7,500 people that work for Mellon bank in western Pennsylvania are fast-money traders who charter private jets to the Hamptons on weekends."

As campaigns enter their final month, a number of candidates are flooding the airwaves with advertisements demonizing Wall Street. From the presidential race to local Congressional contests, from Montana to New Mexico, candidates - both Democrats and Republicans - are relentlessly attacking their opponents by linking them to bankers and bailouts, no matter how tenuous the connection.

"Candidates are bashing each other over the heads for being in Wall Street's back pocket," said Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. "Wall Street is this campaign season's punching bag, and it's bipartisan and it's escalating."

In the turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, Heather A. Wilson, then a Republican congresswoman from New Mexico, voted in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which provided rescue funds to banks. Four years later, Ms. Wilson - a former Air Force officer - is running for the United States Senate. An opponent's ad assails what it characterizes as her deep ties to Wall Street.

"As a congresswoman from New Mexico, it wasn't Heather Wilson's job to represent Wall Street banks," said the narrator in a spot paid for by a liberal super PAC. The ad shows a series of dark, shadowy Manhattan office towers - those of Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. "But she voted time and again to give them special tax breaks, and then voted to bail them out."

In Montana, the incumbent, Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, is facing a fierce challenge from the state's sole congressman, Denny Rehberg. Mr. Tester, who has received substantial money from executives in the financial industry, has boasted in television spots that he "opposed all of those Wall Street bailouts." Mr. Rehberg also voted against the bank bailout. So instead of focusing on TARP, ads pummel Mr. Rehberg for his longtime support for privatizing Social Security - in other words, putting retirement funds in the hands of Wall Street money managers.

One of the ads features the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and an electronic ticker showing shares in a nose dive. The narration features voices of market commentators: "A wild ride on Wall Street ... the biggest point drop ... a precipitous fall ... these guys have been gambling ... gambling ... bad bets ... they didn't know when to back away. A gamble. That's Congressman Denny Rehberg's plan for Social Security."

Josh Mandel, the Republican Ohio state treasurer running for United State Senate as a Washington outsider, has an ad that goes after members of Congress on both sides of the aisle for supporting the bailout.

"Every Democrat and every Republican who took our tax dollars and used them to bail out Wall Street banks was dead wrong," Mr. Mandel says in the spot, speaking in an angry tone to a group of factory workers. "It was fiscally irresponsible. It was morally wrong."

The presidential candidates have also criticized one another for their Wall Street ties. Ads for President Obama have homed in on Mr. Romney's leadership of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he started. By focusing on private equity - a specific pocket of the financial industry - Mr. Obama has largely avoided a broader critique of Wall Street, where he has raised millions of dollars. On Monday, the Obama campaign announced a new ad that links Bain to a company outsourced American jobs.

Republicans, meanwhile, depict Mr. Obama as a pawn of the financial services industry. One advertisement from the conservative organization American Future Fund titled "Obama's Wall Street" highlights Mr. Obama's vote in favor of TARP when he was a United States senator running for president and says that his cabinet is full of financiers. Another, called "Justice for Sale," suggests that campaign contributions from the banking industry explain why the administration has not prosecuted more executives relating to their conduct during the financial crisis.

"Under Obama, Wall Street keeps winning, and Obama keeps taking their cash," the narrator says. "Tell Obama to stop protecting his Wall Street donors."

Mr. Rothfus, the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, is locked in a tight race with his opponent, the Democratic incumbent Mark S. Critz. He has countered the attack ads with humorous "Keith Rothfus is a regular guy" 30-second spots. In one, he is shown gardening in his modest front yard, driving his kids around town and repairing his daughter's bicycle.

In response, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has produced an ad that starts, "Regular guy? Hardly. Keith Rothfus is a millionaire attorney for a Wall Street bank." Banner headlines of the BNY Mellon's $3 billion bailout run across the screen.

Mr. Rothfus, who lives in Sewickley, Pa., with his wife and six children, has worked as a corporate lawyer since graduating from Notre Dame Law School in 1980. For the last 15 years he has practiced on and off at Yukevich, Marchetti, Liekar & Zangrilli, a 12-lawyer firm. He earned about $125,000 last year. His assignments for BNY Mellon constitute a tiny portion of his overall practice, which focuses on small- and medium-size businesses.

"I've never done anything close to securities work for Mellon, never came close to those C.D.O.'s," said Mr. Rothfus, referring to collateralized debt obligations, the complex mortgage instruments that contributed to the near collapse of the financial system. "I've never even done an I.P.O."

Spokesmen for organizations behind the attack ads against Mr. Rothfus - the Democratic House Majority PAC and Afscme - said that they stood behind the ads.

Despite Mr. Rothfus's modest salary - top Wall Street lawyers earn substantial seven-figure salaries - the millionaire epithet is accurate. That comes courtesy of his wife, the daughter of a successful Pittsburgh businessman. Based on his most recent financial disclosure, Mr. Rothfus's total assets, including those of his wife, range from $5.1 million to $13.9 million.

With clean-cut looks and wire-rimmed glasses, Mr. Rothfus does look the part of a button-down Wall Street lawyer. But he is quick to point out that he favors Brooks Brothers off-the-rack suits instead of the bespoke variety and prefers Land's End neckwear to Hermès ties.

"There were certain individuals on Wall Street who were reckless and betrayed our trust," he said. "But I wasn't one of them."



LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



686 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION


JFK gets the O'Reilly treatment O'Reilly writes 'to get people engaged';
Another book to explore another assassination in a 'populist way'


BYLINE: Bob Minzesheimer, @bookbobminz, USA TODAY


SECTION: LIFE; Pg. 1D


LENGTH: 1388 words


Bill O'Reilly describes himself as a journalistic "watchdog" and a "champion bloviator."

He's not a historian -- "not really. That's not my discipline," he says in his corner office at Fox News, home of The O'Reilly Factor, the top-rated show on cable news.

But few history books can approach the popularity of O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, which has sold more than 2 million copies since it was released a year ago. His new book, Killing Kennedy (Henry Holt), about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, could be as popular. It goes on sale today.

Both books were co-written by Martin Dugard, who did most of the research, leaving the writing to O'Reilly, whose approach is to write "history that's fun to read" in a "populist way. No pinheaded stuff, just roar it through!"

It's history as fast-paced thriller, with dramatic foreshadowing in a you-are-there present tense. And, O'Reilly says, "it's all true."

A few historians questioned details and a lack of documentation in Killing Lincoln. O'Reilly, a former high school history teacher, says any errors, corrected in later editions, are "picayune." The criticism, he says, is just jealousy.

"These guys toil in obscurity their whole lives, and a punk like me comes along and sells 2 million copies. They're not happy."

Got a Conspiracy theory?

O'Reilly, 63, is to traditional history what best-selling novelist James Patterson is to literature. Neither gets much respect from academic types. Both say they don't care -- all the way to the bank.

They also share a collaborator. Dugard (whom O'Reilly calls "the best researcher I could find -- and I talked to all the top guys") co-wrote Patterson's 2009 non-fiction best seller, The Murder of King Tut, about a 3,000-year-old mystery.

O'Reilly says he didn't solve all the mysteries of the Kennedy assassination. He found no evidence of a conspiracy but stops short of ruling it out.

"I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No."

But he adds, "There were people around Oswald who shouldn't have been there." He cites George de Mohrenschildt, a well-educated Russian immigrant with possible CIA connections, who "had ties to some very, very important people. Why is he hanging with this loser (Oswald)?"

De Mohrenschildt pops up in other books on the assassination. He's even a minor character in Stephen King's best-selling novel 11/22/63. But O'Reilly has a personal connection.

In 1977, as a Dallas TV reporter, O'Reilly tried to interview de Mohrenschildt, who also was a target of congressional investigators re-examining the assassination.

As O'Reilly tells it, as he knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's house in Palm Beach, Fla., he heard a shotgun blast. Police later ruled that de Mohrenschildt committed suicide.

"There were rumors he was murdered," O'Reilly says, "but I found no evidence of that." He adds: "I'm still working the story. There's something there. What it is, I just don't know."

O'Reilly's biggest surprises were "how crazy, and I mean crazy," Oswald was, and "how little the authorities did to protect Kennedy" in Dallas.

Two-thirds of the book deals with Kennedy's presidency and private life, including his extramarital affairs. It portrays Kennedy as a pragmatic and decisive leader who treated sexual risks as "his carpe diem way of living life to the utmost."

"I wanted to show the good and the bad," O'Reilly says.

He says his biggest break was getting FBI agents who flooded Dallas after the assassination to share what they learned about Oswald.

He says that helped him understand the assassin, a former Marine who defected to Russia, then returned to the USA with his Russian-born wife, Marina.

For a taste of O'Reilly's style, consider his description of Oswald on the eve of the assassination as he visits his estranged wife.

As O'Reilly sets the scene, Oswald is undecided about shooting Kennedy while he begs his wife to take him back. "But if she doesn't," O'Reilly writes, "Oswald will be left with no choice.

"That's how delusional Lee Harvey Oswald's world has become. He now deals only in absolutes: either live happily ever after -- or murder the president."

O'Reilly may not be a historian, but his office walls are filled with historic artifacts, including the last South Vietnamese flag to fly over the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and the errant Chicago Tribune front page proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman."

He boasts, "Everything in here is an original," which could be applied to O'Reilly himself.

His love-him-or-hate-him personality is part of his appeal. To viewers who complain that he shouts, he says: "Turn down the volume. I don't really shout that much. I'm just a loud Irish guy."

He says that the liberal media "don't get me" -- that he's not a conservative but a "traditionalist." In 2009, he supported President Obama's financial bailouts and economic stimulus, which, he says "led to a big brouhaha with (Rush) Limbaugh." Now, O'Reilly complains, Obama "has lost control of the economy." Mitt Romney, he says, can't connect with "the guy making $40,000 a year."

He writes popular history "to get people engaged with their country." He says few history books are fun to read: "Even the really good ones, by Robert Caro and these guys -- they're brilliant guys, but to get through 800 pages, you either have to be retired or on vacation for six weeks."

Caro's fourth book on Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, landed on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 15 and spent seven weeks in the top 150. Killing Lincoln landed at No. 3 and has been in top 50 for 42 weeks. It's now No. 38. (A kids' version, Lincoln's Last Days, landed at No. 42 and is now No. 61.)

A two-hour version of Killing Lincoln, narrated by Tom Hanks, will be on National Geographic in February.

But beyond its commercial success, Killing Lincoln got mixed reviews. Its "narrative flair" was praised by historian Ellen Fitzpatrick in a Washington Post review, but she said it "offers no direct citations for any of its assertions."

Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford's Theatre, the site of Lincoln's assassination, cited seven errors in the book -- such as references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which wasn't built until 1909.

It's a book, not a thesis

O'Reilly says he invited anyone who challenged his facts to appear on his TV show, but no one would. Emerson didn't respond to questions from USA TODAY.

As with Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy doesn't always name names or cite its sources.

"I don't want to sound defensive, but either you believe what we wrote, or you don't," O'Reilly says. "I'm not writing a Ph.D. dissertation."

Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian and author (Cronkite), says that popular history often omits footnotes and that O'Reilly shouldn't be "held to a double standard because of his politics."

But Brinkley adds that the Kennedy assassination remains a heated debate, and "whatever O'Reilly writes, it will be picked apart. The lack of footnotes and details about its sources make it harder to find the book's frailties. But someone will find them -- if they are there."

List

O'Reilly, Stewart ready to rumble for a good cause

Bill O'Reilly says he has no qualms about sharing the stage with a comedian when he debates Jon Stewart at a charity fundraiser Saturday in Washington, D.C.

"I lot of people think I am a comedian," O'Reilly says. "I don't worry about perceptions. Either you like me or you don't. Either you get what I do or you don't."

The 90-minute debate, "The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium" at George Washington University, matches the stars of Fox News and Comedy Central, who have been guests on each other's shows several times. (For $4.95, you can watch it streamed live or download it later at therumble2012.com.)

O'Reilly says there's no doubt whom the "left-wing media" will declare the winner, "no matter what happens. Jon Stewart doesn't even have to show up."

"I know that," he says. "What I'm going in for is a few laughs. I'm going to have my facts. I always do. I'm going to confound Stewart with the facts. He'll confound me with his 16 writers."

Stewart, who often mocks Fox News on his "faux news" show, responds: "Oh, my God, it's only been one sentence and he's already got his facts wrong."


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: photo Stan Godlewski for USA TODAY Bill O'Reilly, photographed by the studio where he films his Fox News show, follows best seller Killing Lincoln with today's Killing Kennedy.


DOCUMENT-TYPE: COVER STORY


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



687 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION


Viewer targeting seen in day of political ads;
Both campaigns swamp Denver before debate


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY,


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A


LENGTH: 943 words


Political campaigns know that what you watch says a lot about who you are likely to vote for.

Democrats watch soap operas; Republicans watch news. College football skews Republican; the NBA skews Democratic -- except in Boston. Want to find independent voters? They're watching Biography channel.

As well-funded political campaigns seek every possible advantage, campaign ads are increasingly spread across the TV schedule based on the political skew of particular programs.

Smaller audiences mean a TV show "is more likely to have a political personality," says Will Feltus of National Media, a Republican media firm. "The Super Bowl doesn't skew Republican or Democratic, but the Colorado-Colorado State (football) game almost certainly skews Republican."

Ads are targeted not just to partisans but to partisans who vote, Feltus says: CBS' The Mentalist not only skews Republican, but 70% of them are likely voters. 60 Minutes viewers are more likely to be Democrats who vote. Undercover Boss viewers are disproportionately Republican, but vote less than average. Ditto Democrats and WWE Friday Night Smackdown.

Last week in Denver -- host to Wednesday's first presidential debate -- President Obama's campaign aired four ads in one hour-long episode of The Doctors, a daytime chat show, and six ads during NBC's late-night lineup. Why? Because that's where the Democrats are: They're 28% more likely to watch daytime talk shows than all TV viewers, and 24% more likely to watch late-night chat, according to Scarborough Research, a research firm whose data are the basis of political media targeting.

Beginning with the George W. Bush campaign in 2004, campaigns have used data such as Scarborough's to target TV ads by audiences with considerable sophistication. As a result, ad buying becomes a combination of reaching big audiences -- which is why broadcast networks rather than cable channels get most of the ads -- and the right audiences.

All points matter

Denver, being the biggest media market in a key swing state, is seeing a deluge of ads.

Audiences watching NBC affiliate KUSA last Tuesday saw 93 ads from Obama's and Mitt Romney's campaigns and two super PACs supporting them. KUSA and USA TODAY are owned by Gannett.

The Obama campaign and the super PAC Priorities USA Action, ran more than twice as many ads as Romney and American Crossroads, 63 ads to 30 ads. Ads ran during every program from the early news at 4 a.m. to Last Call with Carson Daly at 1 a.m.

More than 40% of the ads ran during local news shows -- a target for campaigns because they attract independents who turn out to vote.

With targeting, "you can calculate the cost of (buying an ad in) the show not in terms of demographic rating points but in target-voter ratings points," Feltus says. "All this stuff works at the margins. If it's a 1-point or 2-point race, it matters."

In 2008, an analysis of media buys for Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, showed that the Obama campaign reached a broader spectrum of independent and Republican-leaning independents with its ad buying. Obama "was leaning more toward the (strategy) to reach out to send a wide message, put some ads on programs where the demographics weren't necessarily favorable, they weren't all hard-core Democrats," says Travis Ridout, a Washington State University political scientist involved in the analysis.

McCain was so hampered by lack of money that his campaign wasn't able to do a lot of program targeting, says Kyle Roberts of Smart Media Group, who was McCain's media buyer.

This year, Obama, with the benefit of the experience of 2008, can do multiple layers of targeting with his TV buys: adults 25 and over, then women viewers, or even a third category. "They've mastered that system, strategically and tactically," Roberts says.

Romney suffers from none of the financial constraints that McCain did. But it's not clear, media buyers say, that his campaign is running as nuanced a media buying program as Obama's. In Denver, for instance, Romney did not run ads during the Denver Broncos season opener on Sept. 9, the debut of the team's new marquee quarterback Peyton Manning. Obama ran three, at $28,000 each. On the Denver NBC affiliate last Tuesday, Romney ran 10 of 21 ads in local news and skipped prime time. (On other Denver stations, Romney has run ads during The Mentalist, NCIS and NFL games.)

Romney camp has controls

Obama's media strategy may be more complex because a much larger proportion of pro-Obama advertising is bought by his campaign, Roberts says. Romney is relying more on support from outside groups such as American Crossroads and another PAC called Restore Our Future.

That means the Obama campaign is in charge of almost all the ad spending -- while Romney and his supporters by law cannot coordinate their efforts.

Obama's money will also go further: Pro-Romney super PACs don't get the "lowest unit rate" that TV stations are required by the Federal Communications Commission to give candidates.

In Denver, for instance, Romney paid $1,400 to run a 30-second ad during KUSA's 5 p.m. news. Crossroads had to pay $2,500. As a result, groups that support Romney "are going to find themselves spending an awful lot of money in the last three weeks to match Obama's spot count," says Jack Poor of the Television Bureau, a trade association.

And though TV stations are obligated to sell "reasonable amounts" of airtime to candidates close to an election, the FCC says there's no such duty to sell to super PACs. If a station wants to cap the amount of political ad time it sells in favor of advertisers such as auto dealers, it can.

Contributing: Sara Dirkse in Denver


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: graphic President Obama's "Get Real" ad is running in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. Photos VIA YouTube


DOCUMENT-TYPE: ELECTION 2012


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



688 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 10:28 PM EST


Obama campaign takes over Ohio newspaper (sort of);
Residents of Columbus, Ohio, might be forgiven if they thought their local newspaper had been commandeered Tuesday by President Obama's reelection campaign.


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


LENGTH: 284 words


Residents of Columbus, Ohio, might be forgiven if they thought their local newspaper had been commandeered Tuesday by President Obama's reelection campaign.

A major portion of the Web site for the Columbus Dispatch was taken over by advertising for Obama, whose campaign is pushing supporters to the polls as voters in the crucial swing state begin casting early ballots. By early evening, Obama for America campaign ads still flanked both sides of the newspaper's landing page, with more ads across the top and bottom and a large display ad that took up much of the remaining screen when expanded.

Scrolling down led the user to a regular Dispatch news story on... the start of early voting.

"BREAKING," the largest display ad read. "You can VOTE NOW IN OHIO." Clicking took users to an Obama campaign page with voting locations.

The sizable online ad purchase underscores the importance of Web strategy to the Obama campaign, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on online ads this year and is ubiquitous on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Republican challenger Mitt Romney has also ratcheted up his presence on the Web and social media in recent weeks, though not to the extent of the Obama campaign.

There were no major Obama ads Tuesday afternoon on the Web sites of two other major Ohio newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Philip Pikelny, vice president of Dispatch Digital, which oversees the Columbus paper's Web site, said he expected some negative reaction to the ad buy but has heard very little. He said the newspaper would welcome a similar purchase by the Romney campaign. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



689 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 10:04 PM EST


Angus King's lead in Maine shrinks to single digits, Republican poll shows;
A Republican poll shows the independent's lead has been cut down during the past few weeks, amid the attacks he has faced over the airwaves.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 748 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

FIRST ON THE FIX: 

* Independent former governor Angus King's lead in the Maine Senate race has shrunk to a slight four-point advantage among likely voters over Republican nominee Charlie Summers, according to a GS Strategy Group poll conducted last week for the National Republican Senatorial Committee's independent expenditure arm. The poll shows King leading Summers 37 percent to 33.5 percent, with Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill running third at 17 percent. Twelve percent are undecided. In the previous poll, conducted in early September, King led Summers 44 percent to 33 percent, while Dill was at 11 percent. The NRSC has been hammering King on the airwaves in recent weeks, and the attack is having an effect. 

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Unlike 2008, Obama lacks big enthusiasm advantage

Why Hispanic voter turnout isn't higher, in two charts

DSCC has 'not endorsed' in Maine Senate race, Patty Murray says

The Massachusetts Senate race's 2016 implications

Everything you need to know about the Pennsylvania voter ID fight

Wonk|Fix!

The 10 most memorable moments in presidential debates

The battle for the House - in one chart

What if the presidential debate is boring? It could happen.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Vice President Biden has apparently made another gaffe. Stumping in North Carolina, he charged that Mitt Romney would raise taxes on the middle class, and asked: "How they can justify ... raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?" Romney promptly pounced on the remark, tweeting that he agreed "the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November." Biden later corrected himself, saying: "The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported."

 * President Obama leads Romney 47 percent to 39 percent in a new Roanoke College poll of Virginia. Obama has a wide lead among women (51 percent to 34 percent), while he and Romney are running about even among men. Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine leads former senator George Allen (R) 47 percent to 37 percent in the  survey. 

* A new Deseret News/KSL poll shows Republican challenger Mia Love holding a slight lead over Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah). Love leads Matheson 49 percent to 43 percent in the survey, after trailing by 15 points in June.

* The conservative super PAC American Crossroads has launched its largest ad buy yet: $12 million for a presidential spot airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia and $4 million from sister Group Crossroads GPS for Senate ads in North Dakota, Virginia and Montana. The presidential ad hits Obama over the nation's unemployment rate. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* The Club For Growth is spending $500,000 in the Arizona Senate race and the same amount in Indiana, both for new ads attacking the Democratic nominees. The Club endorsed Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) before their respective primary election wins. 

* Kaine has bought $3 million more in ad time, bringing his total buy through Election Day to $7.5 million. 

* Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) raised over $4 million during the third quarter, another mammoth haul for the congressman, who ended he period with over $3 million in the bank - meaning he spent big, too. West's total haul for the cycle ($14.5 million) appears to be a record for a House candidate. Meanwhile, West's opponent Patrick Murphy (D) is up with a hard-hitting new ad hitting West over his assault of an Iraqi detainee during his time in the Army. 

* The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List's Women Speak Out PAC is launching a $500,000 ad campaign against Obama in Ohio, Florida and Virginia. One spot calls Obama an "abortion radical" while another features a woman who says, "Many children - more than you might think, actually survive failed abortions and are born alive. I know because I am one of them." 

THE FIX MIX: 

To the winner goes the stuffed animal.

 With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



690 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


The staying power of '47 percent'


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1115 words


DENVER - Everybody watching this weekend's Redskins game saw the ad featuring Mitt Romney saying it. In focus groups, pollsters only have to say "47 percent" for voters to know what they're talking about. And lest anyone in Ohio or Florida or Virginia forget, President Obama reminds them at each of his campaign stops.

The remarks in question were, as most of the country now knows, uttered by Romney in May to wealthy donors at a private fundraiser, at which he said that 47 percent of Americans will support Obama's reelection and are government freeloaders who pay no income taxes, see themselves as "victims" and can't be persuaded to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

In the two weeks since a surreptitious video of the remarks surfaced, they have pierced the national consciousness in a way that few blunders do. In the closing stretch of the presidential campaign, the moment has become a defining element of Romney's candidacy.

And on Wednesday, the 47 percent issue is likely to come to the fore in an even more pronounced way, during the first presidential debate. Romney's advisers - who acknowledge that the moment has hurt the Republican nominee among independent voters in battleground states - said he has rehearsed debate answers in which he argues that he is for "the 100 percent" and that his policy prescriptions would help the growing number of Americans under Obama's presidency who are struggling to find work or living on food stamps.

"We wouldn't be surprised, obviously, if that came up in the debate, and the governor's prepared, obviously, to respond to that," senior adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday. "We believe the voters will see and appreciate the fact that what Governor Romney's talking about would improve the quality of life for 100 percent of Americans."

Ticking through a slew of economic statistics that make up the Republican indictment of Obama, Gillespie previewed Romney's message: that he is running to help the 23 million Americans who are struggling to get jobs, the one in six who find themselves in poverty, the additional 15 million now relying on food stamps and the 50 percent of college graduates who can't find employment.

But before Romney has a chance to say all that, his "47 percent" has already taken a toll, strategists in both parties said. The comments go to the heart of the way Obama is trying to define the race: not as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy, but as a choice between a president who fights for the middle class and a candidate who fights for the few.

"The Obama guys are pouring the coals on this on TV and driving it," Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said. "You inform with reason, and you persuade with emotion. They've made the rational case that Romney's policies would hurt the middle class, and this is the emotional counterpart."

Castellanos, who advised Romney's 2008 campaign but is not affiliated with his current one, said there is reason for the Republican's team to be alarmed. "The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding that they don't like you is when voters decide you don't like them," he said.

The Obama campaign has widely circulated a television ad that shows images of factory workers, veterans and families against audio of Romney's 47 percent comments. The spot has a significant footprint, airing across each battleground state in nearly every local television market where the Obama campaign is doing any advertising. It is being shown not only during newscasts but also during such mainstream network programming as NFL games and "Saturday Night Live," according to CMAG Kantar Media.

Romney's comments about the 47 percent are weighing him down with voters, according to recent polls. Almost six in 10 voters nationally say that as president, he would do more to favor the wealthy than the middle class, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday. Specifically regarding the remarks, respondents to a Post-ABC poll from last week were displeased with Romney's viewpoint: Fifty-four percent had an unfavorable impression of his comments, compared with 32 percent who had a favorable view.

Helped by Obama's advertising effort, Romney's 47 percent comments have had a shelf life beyond the damaging remarks he made earlier in the campaign, such as how he likes "being able to fire people who provide services to me," or that he knows what it's like to worry about getting a "pink slip," or the $10,000 bet he once wagered during a debate.

This is in part because his remarks in the fundraiser video could not be dismissed as a gaffe. Longtime Democratic strategist Robert Shrum said many voters who recognize how awkward Romney can be at his rallies may have seen how fluent and comfortable he was at that fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., and concluded, "Wow, that really is the real Romney."

"We could have a big debate about deficit reduction, and it doesn't reach most people except for the headline. This is the kind of thing where the morning after, the week after, people get a cup of coffee, and they mention it to each other. It catches the popular imagination. And if Romney loses, it will become a benchmark and a hallmark of the campaign," said Shrum, a top strategist on Al Gore's and John Kerry's presidential bids.

Romney's brain trust understands this. Publicly, his advisers have said that the comments help crystallize a contrast in the two candidates' governing philosophies: between what Romney sees as a society based on government dependence and one based on free enterprise.

Campaigning last week in Ohio, Romney repeatedly said that he was running to help all Americans - language that advisers said he is likely to reprise in the debate. "I think the president cares about the people of America; I care about all the people in America," Romney said. "But I know how to help the people of America and make sure our future's bright and prosperous for our kids and protect liberty, and he does not. I know what it takes."

Privately, another Romney adviser said that there is "no question it's had an impact."

"I don't think there's any question it's cut, and it's best left alone. Trying to explain it is not helpful. The issue is how long does it hurt, and there is some minuscule but nonetheless hopeful sense that some is beginning to ebb," said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

The adviser added, optimistically, that voters could give Romney the benefit of the doubt in the debate. "That's the only time he has to adequately explain it, and people might actually pay attention to his answer," the adviser said.

ruckerp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



691 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 7:40 PM EST


Ad Watch: Obama accuses Romney of using miners as 'props';
Obama seizes on a local controversy to attack Mitt Romney on coal.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 208 words


Obama for America, "Mandatory"

What it says: "Seen the coal miners in these ads? Turns out they were told that attendance at Mitt Romney's rally was, quote, "mandatory." Their mine was closed, lost the pay they needed, all to be props in Romney's commercial."

What it means: The fight over coal workers continues. While Romney hammers Obama's policies as bad for coal, President Obama has taken a more personal approach, going after the Republican's business record and now his use of unpaid coal miners in an ad.  

What happened: Romney held a rally at Ohio's Century Mine in August, footage of which he has used in ads. Some workers later complained to a local radio host that they were forced to attend and lost pay. A top official responded that workers were told that attendance was mandatory, but that no one was forced to attend, and that the mine had to be shut down during the visit for safety reasons. Romney's camp says they did not request the closure. Murray Energy founder Robert Murray told The Columbus Dispatch that the miners were paid "for the time they were underground."

Who will see it: Ohio. The Obama campaign has not sent out a press release on the ad. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



692 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 4:24 PM EST


What if the presidential debate is boring? It could happen.;
Like Public Enemy said, don't believe the hype.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1068 words


Amid all the hype about Wednesday night's debate being the political event to end all political events, it's important to remember that there's a very real chance that the set-to delivers far less drama than the political class seems to believe it will.

 During a campaign appearance Sunday night in Las Vegas, President Obama seemed to be bracing the political world for a lack of fireworks in Wednesday night's debate.

"What I'm most concerned about is having a serious discussion about what we need to do to keep the country growing and restore security for hardworking Americans," Obama said. "That's what people are going to be listening for.  That's the debate that you deserve."

Rhetoric aside, there's plenty of reason to believe that the first debate will be played between the 40 yard lines - sports metaphor alert!!! - rather than the sort of up and down the field affair that much of the political world seems to expect.

Among the reasons why substance could well trump style Wednesday night:

* Obama is a cautious debater. This was true even during the primary fight when then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nod.  Obama would occasionally take the fight to Clinton but was far more willing to let former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards do the heavy lifting on that front.  Obama's caution was even more evident during the general election debates when he really played a sort of ball control offense - sports metaphor times TWO! - and tried to make as little news as possible, knowing he was winning.  There's little reason to believe - either in his public statements or the private readouts from his debate prep - that Obama will break with that general philosophy on Wednesday night.

* Romney isn't a risk taker - and doesn't need to be. For all the coverage last week that the race was over unless Romney changed the game - worst. cliche. ever. - on Wednesday night, there's a slew of national polls already out this week that suggest Romney is well within striking distance of Obama. Combine that new reality with Romney's play-it-safe nature and there's little reason to believe that the former Massachusetts governor comes out swinging for the fences - one too many sports metaphors? - on Wednesday night. It's not who he is and he has shown in the past that when he tries to break character, it doesn't work out so well. ($10,000 bet, anyone?) 

* Practice, practice, practice = no slipups: Unlike during the Republican presidential primary race when the candidates were debating two and occasionally three(!) times a week, Wednesday night is one of three total debates between Romney and Obama. That means that the level of preparation for the two candidates will be far higher than it was for Romney during the primaries. (Remember that Romney was already doing debate prep during the Democratic National Convention.)  While it's impossible to eliminate all possibility of surprise, the more practice (generally) a politician gets, the better equipped he (or she) is to deal with almost every potential debate development. Genuinely unscripted moments disappear (or come close to disappearing) with so much preparation and both men are putting in the hours to make sure they are ready.

Remember, too, that the first debate may function - particularly in its first 30 minutes or so - as a feeling out period for both men as they try to gain the measure of their rival. Combine all of those factors and it's at least as likely that Wednesday's debate produces a whimper as it does a bang.

RGA raises $14.8 million in the third quarter: The Republican Governors Association's 527 arm brought in nearly $15 million from July through September, for a total of $88 million for the cycle.

The RGA, which has consistently outraised its Democratic counterpart, did not immediately disclose its cash on hand figure. The Democratic Governors Association has not yet released any of its its third quarter figures. 

Republicans are playing a lot of offense across the gubernatorial landscape this cycle: The party is defending 3 seats to Democrats' eight. Republicans have strong pickup opportunities in North Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire and Washington state.

Fixbits:

A new WMUR-TV/University of New Hampshire poll shows Obama leading Romney by 15 in the Granite State.

Former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway has endorsed Romney on the eve of a debate in Denver. Elway is a regular contributor to Republican candidates.

So what exactly is Romney's simple message?

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is avoiding questions about the ethical cloud hanging over his close friend Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.).

Maine Senate frontrunner Angus King (I) is up with a new ad hitting Republican Charlie Summers for supporting "no taxes ever," among other issues.

King releases seven years worth of tax returns.

A new ad from Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) in the Wisconsin Senate race hits former governor Tommy Thompson (R) as a Washington insider.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) leads by 10 points in a new poll for the Columbus Dispatch.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's (R) chief of staff is leaving her office to ramp up her 2014 reelection effort.

Democratic Governors Association Chairman Martin O'Malley (D) challenges his GOP counterpart, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, to a push-up contest. We wouldn't recommend it.

A new RGA ad casts Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock (D) as bad for small businesses.

In the Washington governor's race, the latest RGA ad says the pension plan former congressman Jay Inslee (D) has signed onto puts first responders' retirement at risk.

The DCCC pulls reserved ad time in a few districts, apparently cutting loose Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) and the district vacated by Senate candidate Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.).

Republicans are no longer running ads against Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa.).

A pollster that once showed Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) trailing by 15 points now shows him up six.

Must-reads:

"Would Romney be 'most religious' president? What about Carter?" - Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times

"10 Early Voting States' Downticket Races to Watch" - Shira Toeplitz, Roll Call

"Romney's '47 percent' comments aren't going away, and they're taking a toll" - Philip Rucker, Washington Post

"Americans for Prosperity puts big money on legislative races in Arkansas" - T.W. Farnam, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



693 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 1:51 PM EST


Ad watch: GOP super PAC makes biggest ad buy yet;
GOP super PAC goes big.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 156 words


American Crossroads, "Actually Happened"

What it says: "Obama's spending drove us $5 trillion deeper in debt, and now we have fewer jobs than when he started."

What it means: Mitt Romney has more outside money on his side, but President Obama still leads in polls. American Crossroads is trying to change that with its largest ad buy yet, part of a synchronized economic message. The super PAC is spending $12 million for the presidential campaign along with a $4 million Senate ad buy from sister group Crossroads GPS. 

Who will see it: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia - all the major battlegrounds. The Senate ads will air in North Dakota, Virginia and Montana.

Fact Checker: It's no longer true that we have fewer jobs now than when Obama took office... thanks to recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



694 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 2, 2012 Tuesday 2:57 AM EST


Obama's claim that the Bush tax cuts led to the economic crisis;
The president asserts that the Bush tax cuts, along with deregulation, led to the 2008 economic crisis. Really?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1559 words


"Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place."

- President Obama, in a new two-minute television ad released Sept. 27, 2012

"This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper income people and go back to deregulation. That is what got us into trouble in the first place."

- Former president Bill Clinton, in an Obama campaign ad running since August

When two different people give virtually the same message in two different ads, it's a good bet that the language has been carefully poll-tested. Both President Obama and former president Bill Clinton assert that Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut financial regulations - which they suggest is a recipe for another economic crisis.

The name "George W. Bush" is never mentioned but is certainly implied. This leads to the question: Did the Bush tax cuts cause the economic crisis?

We've been interested in the Clinton comments for some time and never quite got a satisfactory response from the Obama campaign. But Clinton used the vague word "trouble," which could be broadly defined as also meaning higher deficits. (Clinton's staff did not respond to queries about what he meant.) Certainly the Bush tax cuts did play some role in higher deficits, though, as we have noted, increased spending played a bigger role.

But Obama is not vague at all. He highlights the tax cuts and then says the "same trickle-down policies" - Democratic code for tax cuts for the wealthy - led to the "crisis." The campaign's back-up material labels that as "economic crisis," thus leaving no ambiguity about his reference.

The Facts

We should stipulate at the outset that Romney adamantly rejects the idea that he has proposed more tax cuts for the wealthy. His plan would cut tax rates, but also eliminate tax deductions, which he says would make the plan revenue neutral. But no one has proven that his numbers add up, and the respected nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that the available details on the Romney plan suggest taxes would decrease for the wealthy but rise for the middle class.

Romney has advocated repealing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. As for the role of deregulation in the crisis, there certainly has been news reporting showing that the Bush administration generally took a hands- off approach to regulating financial institutions.

But others would note the irony of Clinton citing the perils of deregulation under Bush because he also is culpable. Clinton signed into law a repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banks - a policy shift that some have said also played a role in the economic crisis. Moreover, Clinton also signed into law the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which essentially removed derivatives contracts from regulatory oversight. By many accounts, derivatives, such as the credit default swap, were at the heart of the financial crisis.

Indeed, Clinton has admitted that he was given wrong advice about the need to regulate derivatives contracts. "I think they were wrong, and I think I was wrong to take" their advice, Clinton said of his economic advisers.

The Dodd-Frank bill tightened regulations on derivatives contracts, thus reversing the decision that Clinton - not Bush - had made.

While one can argue whether deregulation under Clinton or Bush played a bigger role in the financial crisis, the notion that the Bush tax cuts "led" to the 2008 crisis is especially puzzling. The campaign's back-up material for the Obama ad cites only one source - a column by our colleague Ezra Klein. Here is how it is presented:

ROMNEY WOULD DOUBLE DOWN ON THE POLICIES THAT LEAD TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

Washington Post's Ezra Klein: "Reading Romney's Policies, You Would Never Know That The Nation Is Still Facing High Unemployment Rates Or That It Just Came Through The Worst Financial Crisis In A Generation ... There's Nothing In His Campaign Platform That Couldn't Have Been In Bush's Platform. In Fact, Most Of It Was."

"Reading Romney's policies, you would never know that the nation is still facing high unemployment rates or that it just came through the worst financial crisis in a generation. You certainly wouldn't think we'd just emerged from a decade in which large tax cuts and financial deregulation led to major economic distress. This is not necessarily the fault of Romney's advisers, who have rethought elements of the Republican Party platform and have taken risks. Mankiw, for instance, has eloquently argued for a tax on carbon emissions and for a looser monetary policy. Hubbard has pushed efforts to encourage mass refinancing. Vin Weber, another Romney adviser, was an advocate of the Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction plan. But Romney hasn't gone for any of these policies. There's nothing in his campaign platform that couldn't have been in Bush's platform. In fact, most of it was." [Ezra Klein, Washington Post, 4/30/12]

There's one problem though: the column does not back up Obama's statement about tax cuts. Klein mostly laments the fact that, in his view, the Romney campaign does not appear to have new ideas with which to confront today's economic realities.

Just to be sure, we checked with Klein, and here is how he responded: "I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there's no evidence of that."

Klein is right. While some on the left have speculated about some kind of Rube Goldberg phenomenon - that the tax cuts put so much money in the pockets of the rich that they had nothing to spend it on but risky and exotic financial instruments - we are unaware of any respected academic study making this link. The Bush tax cuts have been amply criticized for costing too much and generating too little economic growth, but that's entirely different from causing the Great Recession.

Indeed, the official government inquiry, the 631-page final report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, makes no mention of the Bush tax cuts. The report, endorsed by every Democrat on the panel, does cite deregulation, but 30 years of deregulation across multiple administrations - not just deregulation in the Bush years.

The Obama campaign said that Obama was referring to all of Bush's policies, not just tax cuts. We think that distinction would be lost on ordinary people. Just like Clinton, Obama mentions only two things: tax cuts and deregulation. He then adds that such "trickle-down policies" led to the crisis - and "trickle down" is Democratic pejorative for "tax cuts for the rich."

Obama campaign deputy press secretary Kara Carscaden defended the president's remarks and issued this response:

"While Reagan made 'trickle down' famous for tax cuts, the theory is that economic growth is driven by the top. Those like Romney who favor repealing Wall Street reform share the same theory - roll back the rules because when a few people at the top do very well, they will somehow pull the rest of us along.

"The tax cuts contributed to the crisis in multiple ways, including by driving up the deficit, crowding out potential investments that could have promoted sustainable, shared economic growth and leaving the economy vulnerable to speculation-fueled bubbles and high middle-class indebtedness. And they made it more difficult for the federal government to respond to a crisis because it was already facing very high deficits.

"The president's argument - that our country is stronger when we invest in the middle class rather than cut taxes to the top - is the broad, philosophic question facing our country right now."

The Pinocchio Test

It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point, no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters. The financial crisis of 2008 stemmed from a variety of complex factors, in particular the bubble in housing prices and the rise of exotic financial instruments. Deregulation was certainly an important factor, but as the government commission concluded, the blame for that lies across administrations, not just in the last Republican one.

In any case, the Bush tax cuts belong at the bottom of the list - if at all. Moreover, it is rather strange for the campaign to cite as its source an article that, according to the author, does not support this assertion.

We nearly made this Four Pinocchios but ultimately decided that citing deregulation in conjunction with tax cuts kept this line out of the "whopper" category. Still, in his effort to portray Romney as an echo of Bush, the president really stretches the limits here.

Three Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



695 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 2, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


The staying power of '47 percent'


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1113 words


DATELINE: DENVER


DENVER - Everybody watching this weekend's Redskins game saw the ad featuring Mitt Romney saying it. In focus groups, pollsters only have to say "47 percent" for voters to know what they're talking about. And lest anyone in Ohio or Florida or Virginia forget, President Obama reminds them at each of his campaign stops.

The remarks in question were, as most of the country now knows, uttered by Romney in May to wealthy donors at a private fundraiser, at which he said that 47 percent of Americans will support Obama's reelection and are government freeloaders who pay no income taxes, see themselves as "victims" and can't be persuaded to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

In the two weeks since a surreptitious video of the remarks surfaced, they have pierced the national consciousness in a way that few blunders do. In the closing stretch of the presidential campaign, the moment has become a defining element of Romney's candidacy.

And on Wednesday, the 47 percent issue is likely to come to the fore in an even more pronounced way, during the first presidential debate. Romney's advisers - who acknowledge that the moment has hurt the Republican nominee among independent voters in battleground states - said he has rehearsed debate answers in which he argues that he is for "the 100 percent" and that his policy prescriptions would help the growing number of Americans under Obama's presidency who are struggling to find work or living on food stamps.

"We wouldn't be surprised, obviously, if that came up in the debate, and the governor's prepared, obviously, to respond to that," senior adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday. "We believe the voters will see and appreciate the fact that what Governor Romney's talking about would improve the quality of life for 100 percent of Americans."

Ticking through a slew of economic statistics that make up the Republican indictment of Obama, Gillespie previewed Romney's message: that he is running to help the 23 million Americans who are struggling to get jobs, the one in six who find themselves in poverty, the additional 15 million now relying on food stamps and the 50 percent of college graduates who can't find employment.

But before Romney has a chance to say all that, his "47 percent" has already taken a toll, strategists in both parties said. The comments go to the heart of the way Obama is trying to define the race: not as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy, but as a choice between a president who fights for the middle class and a candidate who fights for the few.

"The Obama guys are pouring the coals on this on TV and driving it," Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said. "You inform with reason, and you persuade with emotion. They've made the rational case that Romney's policies would hurt the middle class, and this is the emotional counterpart."

Castellanos, who advised Romney's 2008 campaign but is not affiliated with his current one, said there is reason for the Republican's team to be alarmed. "The only thing in politics that is worse than voters deciding that they don't like you is when voters decide you don't like them," he said.

The Obama campaign has widely circulated a television ad that shows images of factory workers, veterans and families against audio of Romney's 47 percent comments. The spot has a significant footprint, airing across each battleground state in nearly every local television market where the Obama campaign is doing any advertising. It is being shown not only during newscasts but also during such mainstream network programming as NFL games and "Saturday Night Live," according to CMAG Kantar Media.

Romney's comments about the 47 percent are weighing him down with voters, according to recent polls. Almost six in 10 voters nationally say that as president, he would do more to favor the wealthy than the middle class, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday. Specifically regarding the remarks, respondents to a Post-ABC poll from last week were displeased with Romney's viewpoint: Fifty-four percent had an unfavorable impression of his comments, compared with 32 percent who had a favorable view.

Helped by Obama's advertising effort, Romney's 47 percent comments have had a shelf life beyond the damaging remarks he made earlier in the campaign, such as how he likes "being able to fire people who provide services to me," or that he knows what it's like to worry about getting a "pink slip," or the $10,000 bet he once wagered during a debate.

This is in part because his remarks in the fundraiser video could not be dismissed as a gaffe. Longtime Democratic strategist Robert Shrum said many voters who recognize how awkward Romney can be at his rallies may have seen how fluent and comfortable he was at that fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., and concluded, "Wow, that really is the real Romney."

"We could have a big debate about deficit reduction, and it doesn't reach most people except for the headline. This is the kind of thing where the morning after, the week after, people get a cup of coffee, and they mention it to each other. It catches the popular imagination. And if Romney loses, it will become a benchmark and a hallmark of the campaign," said Shrum, a top strategist on Al Gore's and John Kerry's presidential bids.

Romney's brain trust understands this. Publicly, his advisers have said that the comments help crystallize a contrast in the two candidates' governing philosophies: between what Romney sees as a society based on government dependence and one based on free enterprise.

Campaigning last week in Ohio, Romney repeatedly said that he was running to help all Americans - language that advisers said he is likely to reprise in the debate. "I think the president cares about the people of America; I care about all the people in America," Romney said. "But I know how to help the people of America and make sure our future's bright and prosperous for our kids and protect liberty, and he does not. I know what it takes."

Privately, another Romney adviser said that there is "no question it's had an impact."

"I don't think there's any question it's cut, and it's best left alone. Trying to explain it is not helpful. The issue is how long does it hurt, and there is some minuscule but nonetheless hopeful sense that some is beginning to ebb," said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

The adviser added, optimistically, that voters could give Romney the benefit of the doubt in the debate. "That's the only time he has to adequately explain it, and people might actually pay attention to his answer," the adviser said.

ruckerp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



696 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 1, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


Tired Cries Of Bias Don't Help Romney


BYLINE: By DAVID CARR


SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; THE MEDIA EQUATION; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1132 words


In the last few days, conservatives have become agitated about Mitt Romney's drop-off in the polls. So did they think the stumble was because of the ill-fated ''47 percent'' slip of the lip, or the hasty effort to gain a political edge after the death of an American ambassador in Libya, or more problematically, a campaign that can't seem to stop pratfalling no matter what the news?

No, in their view, the mysterious drop can only be explained by the fact that the mainstream media have their collective liberal thumb on the scale, in terms of coverage and, more oddly, polling.

On Sunday, Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, got right to the point.

''It goes without saying that there is definitely media bias,'' Mr. Ryan told ''Fox News Sunday.'' ''I think most people in the mainstream media are left of center and, therefore, they want a very left-of-center president versus a conservative president like Mitt Romney.''

And ostensibly tendentious coverage was cited last Wednesday in a letter addressed to the ''Biased News Media'' and sponsored by the Media Research Center, which defines its mission as ''holding the liberal media accountable for shamelessly advancing a left-wing agenda.'' The letter said in part: ''This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda.''

It was signed by conservative royalty, including Brent Bozell, Gary Bauer, Ed Meese, Tony Perkins, Rush Limbaugh and Richard Viguerie. It included a list of chronic offenses and concluded, ''It is time the American people turn you who are offending off, once and for all. You have betrayed their trust.''

The mainstream media are frequently indicted suspects when the rink tilts against conservative causes. But it seems worth pulling apart that notion, especially in a landscape where ownership of the megaphone is increasingly up for grabs.

Back when Spiro Agnew went after the ''nattering nabobs of negativism,'' most people got their news from three networks and a handful of national newspapers. Network news still pulls in more than 20 million viewers nightly, and newspapers still matter in spite of their business struggles, but their influence is waning as thousands of new sources of information bloom.

As the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press pointed out last week, digital news has surpassed radio and newspapers and is quickly catching up to television. Social networks are soaring as a source of news, and since 2010, the report said, ''there has been a sharp decline in the proportion of Americans who got news yesterday only from a traditional news platform -- from 40 percent then to 33 percent currently.''

Even if legacy media still maintained some kind of death grip on American consciousness, it would be hard to claim that the biggest players in those industries are peddling liberal theology.

Think about it. What is the No. 1 newspaper in America by circulation? Why, that would be The Wall Street Journal, a bastion of conservative values on its editorial pages and hardly a suspect when it comes to lefty news coverage. (Though it's worth pointing out that the paper has published some very tough coverage of Mr. Romney.)

What about radio? Three of the top five radio broadcasters -- Mr. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the recently departed Michael Savage -- have outdrawn NPR's morning and evening programs by a wide margin. In cable television, Fox News continues to pummel the competition.

Many Republicans see bias lurking in every live shot, but the growing hegemony of conservative voices makes manufacturing a partisan conspiracy a practical impossibility.

Let's be fair. It's not as if everyone who believes there is a liberal bias needs to be fitted for a tinfoil helmet. But the trope is losing traction, partly because there are many robust champions of the right, which gives conservatives the means to project their message far beyond the choir.

It's hard to picture conservatives as disenfranchised in the fight for attention from the news media, not after a campaign season in which the audition for the Republican nomination seemed to include some combination of hosting and making guest appearances on Fox News. Another thing about the media blame game? It doesn't work. Newt Gingrich ran hard against the news media and that didn't turn out so great.

Mr. Romney seems to have realized that. After weeks of complaints from his surrogates that his campaign missteps were being invented and/or amplified by the news media, he is no longer regularly shooting the messenger.

''I think we have a system of free press,'' he told CBS before an appearance in Toledo, Ohio. ''People are able to provide their own perspective based upon their own beliefs. I think there are some people who are more in my camp, there's a lot of people who are more in his camp, and I don't worry about that.''

A senior adviser, meanwhile, said the Romney campaign now has a ''no-whining rule'' about news coverage. (Mr. Ryan apparently missed the memo.) And William Kristol of The Weekly Standard told Politico that, ''it shouldn't be the consensus of conservatives in general to blame the media.''

But the pushback goes beyond coverage. Now even the polls themselves are being impugned, with suggestions that they are skewed by left-leaning math. Various conservative bloggers and pundits have complained that a slew of polls showing gains by President Obama were guilty of ''oversampling Democrats'' and ''confirmation bias.''

If that rings a little familiar, recall that when the election seemed to be slipping away from John Kerry in 2004, MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in The New York Times accusing the Gallup organization of overrepresenting Republicans and asking, ''Why does America's top pollster keep getting it wrong?''

Of course, given that I am pointing out these disconnects in The New York Times, it will be seen as confirming what conservatives already know: that I went to the dark chambers where we cook up the conspiracy, met with my betters to receive my marching orders and then set about playing my small role as a cog in the manufacture of liberal consent. (Memo to headquarters: the Plan is in very high effect).

Maybe though -- and I'm just putting this out there -- the polls and the coverage suggest that Mr. Romney has had a bad couple of weeks and he needs to turn it around if he wants to win the election. On Sunday, a well-informed observer pointed out as much on ABC's ''This Week.''

''I'm not going to sit here and complain about coverage of the campaign. As a candidate, if you do that, you're losing.'' That bit of trenchant analysis comes from deep inside the Republican tent: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/business/media/challenging-the-claims-of-media-bias-the-media-equation.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney on board the campaign plane at Dayton International Airport last week. Republicans have denounced recent unfavorable polls. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B4)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



697 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 1, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


A Mockumentary Nets Real Players


BYLINE: By JOHN ANDERSON


SECTION: Section C; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1049 words


TORONTO -- During the Jan. 3 broadcast of ABC's ''World News Tonight'' Diane Sawyer introduced a heartbreaking segment from the Iowa caucus, featuring a distraught voter being consoled by Mitt Romney. ''Save the small families of America,'' she begged through tears, as Mr. Romney hugged her and promised he would.

As audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival recently discovered, that was no conservative Christian in Mr. Romney's arms. It was the actress Jane Edith Wilson, star of ''Janeane From Des Moines,'' which might be called a mockumentary but which features a rather prestigious lineup of supporting players, including Mr. Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They were running in this year's Republican primaries as ''Janeane'' went shopping for a candidate to support.

ABC was certainly not the only news organization taken in by Ms. Wilson's performance, nor Mr. Romney the only politician. As Juana Summers of Politico reported during a campaign stop by Mrs. Bachmann, ''Janeane Wilson, 47, who drove from near Waukee, Iowa, to see Bachmann got more than 10 minutes with the presidential candidate but finished still unsure.'' Kathie Obradovich, a political columnist for The Des Moines Register, blogged about Janeane and her indecision about whether to vote for Mr. Santorum, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry.

ABC News and Ms. Summers declined to comment, as did the Romney and Bachmann campaigns. But Ms. Obradovich was good-natured about the ruse. ''I do remember there was a camera hovering over her, but as far as I remember, I don't think she went out of the way to get my attention,'' she said, adding with a laugh, ''When I interview people, I don't usually ask for a driver's license.''

The license would have said that Ms. Wilson is 48, has red hair and lives in Los Angeles. What it wouldn't say is that she has appeared on ''Curb Your Enthusiasm,'' ''ER,'' ''The Bernie Mac Show'' and ''Seinfeld,'' and can currently be seen in commercials for Tide and Hyundai. Until she became a mother, she was a regular on the Los Angeles stand-up comedy circuit.

She met the filmmaker Grace Lee during the making of Ms. Lee's tongue-in-cheek ''American Zombie'' (2007), and they reconnected while attending a seminar on the crowd-funding of documentaries. Ms. Wilson had wanted to make a film about the Christian left (she is a socially progressive Episcopalian). Ms. Lee had another notion.

''I knew she was a great actress, and a great improviser,'' Ms. Lee said. ''We were talking about politics and Iowa; she comes from Iowa originally. And I thought this would be a more interesting approach to these topics.''

The topics include the Obama health care plan, Planned Parenthood and gay marriage, all of which the fictional Janeane fiercely opposes, until her husband, Fred (Michael Oosterom), loses his health insurance, she receives a diagnosis of breast cancer, and Fred turns out to be gay. As schematic as the plotline may be, Ms. Wilson's stealth performance as the frumpy, frazzled Janeane seems singular, and exhausting: not only did she have to bulldog her way to the front of the press corps to get close to the candidates, she also had to stay in character even when the camera was elsewhere.

''It was an elongated improv, for hours on end,'' she said. When she was waiting to meet the candidates, she was improvising with strangers.

''Iowans are friendly, and you have to be friendly too,'' Ms. Wilson said. ''I like to think I'm a friendly person. And I don't have contempt for Tea Party patriots or people who are very conservative or different from me ideologically.''

She never abandoned the masquerade, not in Iowa. Which was occasionally frustrating. ''When I was at a Santorum event, a woman told me this harrowing story about all these emergency room visits she'd been through and how she owed $20,000 and how she's going to pay it off on an installment plan,'' Ms. Wilson said. ''And then she immediately says how much she hates Obamacare and how much she loves Santorum and hopes he wins. And there's a part of me that wanted to say, 'Are you crazy?' ''

On the other side was an Iowa woman who responded to Janeane's litany of woes by pressing her phone number on Ms. Wilson and briefing her on health care options. ''She said, 'Call me, and I'll walk you through it,' '' Ms. Wilson said.

Both actress and director had experience with the caucuses. In 1988 Ms. Wilson was performing stand-up to entertain volunteers in both parties, and Ms. Lee was covering them for the University of Missouri student newspaper.

''We knew it was a media circus,'' said Ms. Lee, who grew up in Missouri, ''and an interesting place for political theater. We were frustrated about what was going on in the election. We said, 'What tools do we have as artists?' We don't have money, we don't have Super PACs. But I know how to make a film, and she knows how to act. We thought we could combine those things and start a conversation.''

Some of the conversation has been heated. ''Two guys got really mad at one of our screenings here, and one said, 'This is the most deceitful movie I've ever seen,' '' Ms. Lee said, referring to a showing at the Toronto festival. ''The crowd booed them. When Jane mentioned, 'I'm a Christian,' one of them said, 'Aren't you ashamed as a Christian?' ''

Critics' reaction has been less fevered on the festival circuit, where the film, which will be released in New York on Oct. 12 and on several online platforms before the election. ''It admirably refuses to go the predictable route of 'punking' the candidates for easy satire or cheap laughs,'' Dennis Harvey wrote in Variety, while the entertainment Web site Toronto Film Scene said, ''This film makes Michael Moore look subtle.''

Ms. Lee, whose credits include ''The Grace Lee Project,'' a documentary about women also named Grace Lee, said the intention was not to deceive. ''I never ever say it's a documentary,'' she said, pointing out that it wasn't showing as part of the festival's documentary section. ''I make documentaries. I think I know what they are.''

For Ms. Wilson it was a job like no other. ''It's the craziest thing I ever did in my life,'' she said. ''If something crazier than this comes along, I welcome it.''

Ms. Lee added, ''I have some ideas.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/movies/janeane-from-des-moines-mock-documentary-hits-the-right.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: JANE EDITH WILSON, an actress, on how she was able to convince politicians like Michele Bachmann, above, and Mitt Romney, top, during the Republican presidential primaries that she was a conservative worried about the direction of the country. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILSILU PICTURES) (C5)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



698 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


October 1, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


Flooding the Dance Floor With Political Pitches


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 14


LENGTH: 413 words


The ticket to the White House could be any number of things. Early voting. High turnout among the party's base. Ohio.

But Republicans and Democrats seem to agree that their chances improve markedly if they can win over one important constituency: the audience of ''Dancing With the Stars.''

The ABC show is the hottest ticket around this year for political strategists who buy commercial time. Last week, when the show's 15th season began with the elimination of Pamela Anderson from a cast of ''all stars,'' the list of political sponsors included nearly every major player in the presidential campaign.

According to data from Kantar Media, President Obama and Mitt Romney ran advertisements during the show, as did two Republican ''super PACs,'' Restore Our Future and American Crossroads. Planned Parenthood also advertised.

This week, the Ending Spending Action Fund will join them with a national ad buy on the program. The fund is a super PAC created by Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, who just started an ad campaign featuring testimonials from former supporters of Mr. Obama.

''Dancing With the Stars'' may not seem an obvious fit with presidential politics, but it checks a number of boxes that media strategists like when they are deciding how to use ad budgets.

Brian C. Baker, the president of the Ending Spending Action Fund, said the show ''hits all the right demographics.''

First, its audience is huge. Nearly 15 million people tuned in to the show's season premiere last Monday, making it the highest-rated program that night.

Also, many of the viewers are older women -- a demographic both sides are trying to appeal to. And because its viewers are older, they are more likely to vote.

Though Mr. Obama enjoys a double-digit advantage among women voters, according to recent polls, Mr. Romney and the Republican super PACs have been trying to narrow that gap with new ads. In some cases, Republican ad makers are even using babies in their commercials to press the point that the ballooning federal debt will be left for the next generation. Rarely will a presidential campaign commercial -- either for or against the president -- not feature at least one female face.

But ''Dancing With the Stars'' also appeals to political media buyers on another level. Because the show is live and viewers vote for their favorite contestants, people are less likely to record the show and watch it later. That means they are not fast-forwarding through commercial breaks.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/us/politics/political-ads-flood-dancing-with-the-stars.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



699 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Well)


October 1, 2012 Monday


Feeling the Pressure to Drink for Work


BYLINE: DOUGLAS QUENQUA


SECTION: HEALTH


LENGTH: 1225 words



HIGHLIGHT: For professionals who abstain from alcohol, it can sometimes seem harder to get ahead if you're not willing to throw one back.


As an ad-sales executive with Forbes magazine, Terry Lavin worked hard to earn his reputation as a dependable drinking buddy.

"I just basically rented space at P. J. Clarke's," he said, referring to the Midtown Manhattan watering hole. "I was always the last to leave, always had a cocktail in my hand."

In a business built on likability, the role helped him succeed. Until 2010, when he decided to give his body a break and quit drinking for six months. His health got better; his business did not.

"I would call guys I was friendly with, guys who had their hands on big ad budgets, to see if they wanted to go to happy hour or get something to eat," he recalled, "And they'd say: 'Are you drinking? No? Don't worry about it.' "

So much for the benefits of the sober life.

Even as three-martini lunches and whiskey-fueled staff meetings become harder to find outside of cable TV, plenty of American business rituals continue to revolve around alcohol. Whether it's courting a client, sketching out a deal or simply proving you're a team player, quaffing a round of beers is arguably more vital to many jobs than nailing a round of golf.

For professionals who abstain from alcohol - for health, religion, recovery or simple preference - it can sometimes seem harder to get ahead if you're not willing to throw one back.

"You're expected to drink, and drinking is part of what you do, and there's a little bit of circumspection if you say you don't do it," said Link Christin, director of a special treatment program for legal professionals started last year by Hazelden, a network of alcohol- and drug-rehabilitation centers based in Minnesota. "If you say you don't drink, you have to deal with the suspicion that you can't play the game."

To find that attitude in action, look no further than this year's presidential campaign. As a part of his pitch to voters that Mitt Romney, a teetotaler Mormon, is different from most Americans, President Obama has made a conspicuous display of his own regular-guy fondness for beer.

"Yesterday I went to the State Fair, and I had a pork chop and a beer," Mr. Obama boasted to an Iowa crowd in August the day after he closed down a beer kiosk so he could buy brews for himself and 10 other fairgoers. "And it was good. Today I just had a beer. I didn't get the pork chop. But the beer was good, too." The crowd rewarded him with chants of "Four more beers!"

When the public demanded that Mr. Obama release his recipes for home brews after he shared a bottle of one with a coffee shop patron in Knoxville, Iowa, the White House milked the moment by first demanding 25,000 signatures on a petition. (The White House eventually relented, releasing two recipes after just 12,000 signatures.)

It's hardly a new tactic among politicians. Edward M. Kennedy complained about the lack of alcohol in Jimmy Carter's White House as he prepared to challenge the president in the 1980 primaries. And it has become a pollsters' truism in recent years that voters choose the candidate they'd rather have a beer with. (The most recent nondrinker to take the White House, George W. Bush, at least made sure he was occasionally photographed holding a nonalcoholic O'Doul's.)

For less public figures, the notion that people who don't drink can't perform in business - or, worse, are somehow untrustworthy - can impede professional progress.

"There is a perception almost that you're impotent," said one nondrinker, an editor at a liquor-focused lifestyle magazine who asked not to be identified because many of his co-workers don't know he recently entered a 12-step program.

Professional disadvantages to sobriety range from the literal - the editor had to decline a potential promotion because it would have involved wine tasting - to subtle.

"I regularly turn down lunches and dinners with industry people that I would have jumped at in the past," the editor said. "I just can't go to dinner with a winemaker and tell him: 'No, thank you. I'm not tasting those.' "

One hardly has to work directly with alcohol to experience this. On Wall Street, where a "models and bottles" lifestyle prevails, those who don't drink "complain that they can't close a deal, can't even get into early negotiations because they won't engage in drinking behaviors," said John Crepsac, a New York City therapist who counsels Wall Street workers in recovery.

Social scientists refer to it as "social capital," the amount of economic potential to be harnessed from one's capacity to fit in.

"There were times I knew the guys were going out with customers that could help advance my career," said one nondrinking Wall Street trader who asked to remain anonymous because his employer doesn't allow staff members to talk to the media, "but it was just unspoken: 'Yeah, we won't invite him 'cause we'll probably get up to some drinking and he won't partake, so what's the point?' "

Of course, sobriety and success are not mutually exclusive. Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Larry Ellison are all lifetime abstainers. Whether or not he wins, Mr. Romney hasn't lacked for success, either.

And sober women might actually benefit from an old double standard. "Men are still expected to get together and go wild, but in some ways it's frowned upon if the woman engages in it," Dr. Crepsac said, noting that few of his female patients have complained that sobriety hurt their careers. "There are plenty of things for which women are discriminated against in the workplace, but this isn't one of them."

Still, research supports the idea that nondrinkers have a harder time climbing the corporate ladder. Multiple studies have shown that moderate drinkers earn more money than those who don't drink, though heavy drinkers earn less than moderate drinkers.

That pressure to perform can sometimes cause professionals in recovery to backslide. This is one reason that Hazelden created a support group especially for lawyers who are trying to stay sober.

"The pressure to bring in business at legal firms, to be a rainmaker, is greater than ever," said Mr. Christin, a former litigation lawyer and a recovered alcoholic. When someone must choose between supporting his or her family and having a glass of wine, it can be tough to stay the course, he said.

Teetotalers tend to develop strategies for socializing professionally without alcohol. Some will order a drink and simply leave it alone; others use humor to deflect unwanted attention. "I tell people I'm pregnant," said the Wall Street trader (a man).

Mr. Lavin, who is on leave from ad sales to write a book, advises asking for your drink in deceiving glassware. "People are much calmer if you're drinking a seltzer water out of a rocks glass," he said.

And there is justice to be had. Joe McKinsey, a former mortgage executive who opened a rehab clinic for executives in East Hampton, N.Y., after his own recovery, said it had taken only a few months of being sober at his old job to go from a target of ridicule to a confidant for those in trouble.

"Eventually you get people buttonholing you, asking, 'Do you think I have a problem?' " he said. "I became the go-to guy if you needed to have a private talk."



LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



700 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 1, 2012 Monday


The Early Word: Inevitable


BYLINE: JADA F. SMITH


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 338 words



HIGHLIGHT: Political news from today's Times and a look at the latest happenings in Washington.


Today's Times







Happenings in Washington






LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



701 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(You're the Boss)


October 1, 2012 Monday


This Week in Small Business: About That Replacement Ref


BYLINE: GENE MARKS


SECTION: BUSINESS; smallbusiness


LENGTH: 1685 words



HIGHLIGHT: The top 50 start-ups, cold-calling strategies, cash flow concerns - and what would you do to revive Myspace?


What's affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

Economy: What Fiscal Cliff?

A new survey finds chief financial officers less optimistic about economic growth. Brad Plumer explains why fears of a fiscal cliff are not hurting the economy, and Jared Bernstein reveals important new research on a fiscal cliff issue. Defense contractors brace for federal budget cuts. Economic advisers to President Obama and Mitt Romney squabble. Zachary A. Goldfarb says that under Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve has become more open and forceful. The chief of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank anticipates that the economy will "gain momentum over the next few years." A new book tries to help entrepreneurs reignite the economy. A bacon shortage threatens the world.

The Data: A Seven-Month High

Manufacturing growth improves in Texas and the central Atlantic region. Home prices notch their biggest gains in seven years. Consumer confidence rises to a seven-month high, and consumers step up their spending. But new home sales fall slightly and orders for durable goods plunge. And revised gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter of 2012.

Finance: Could It Get Any Worse for B. of A.?

A new Visa study says cash flow concerns top the list of small-business worries. One of the biggest lenders to small businesses will soon be on the auction block. Even when consumers are comfortable using new payment technologies, studies show they sometimes prefer paying cash. Here's why used car prices are rising. The replacement ref who made that controversial calllast Monday is a vice president for small business at Bank of America. Did Iran attack our banks (and lose its sense of humor)?

Start-Ups: A Start-Up That Helps Start-Ups

Tim Ferriss explains Y Combinator's contribution to the start-up scene. This is a start-up that helps start-ups. A solar panel start-up will tap a $197 million loan guarantee. Amazon may be getting into the wine business - and it's also lending money to small businesses. A San Francisco start-up offers scooter rentals. The Wall Street Journal names the top 50 start-ups.

Selling: Replace Your Reps

Jill Konrath suggests cold-calling strategies. Matthew Bellows explains how small companies can stand out when selling to big companies: "Showing your prospects the characteristics that set your company apart is key to moving the conversation beyond a checklist comparison." To sell well, John Jantsch says, you must tell stories. Laura Spencer has some advice for dealing with tire-kickers and other bad clients. Lars Lofgren explains why you should replace your sales representatives with ambassadors.

Marketing: Are You a Jerk?

These are the top cities in America for social-media-savvy small businesses. Jessica Levko says there are 10 signs that you're a social media jerk, including: "You're attached to your smartphone." A show with Martin Sheen explains how small businesses can use social media to find new customers. These are the most important local business directories for search engine optimization. A new Facebook service facilitates the creation of "couponlike" promotions. Erica Ayotte explains how to use Instagram to promote your business. These are five types of images that will enhance your online marketing. A few entrepreneurs share their promotional swag secrets. Annette Du Bois thinks your marketing may be a turnoff. Here's a case study on how a clothing company lifted its sales 205 percent with daily deal e-mails. This is what a Las Vegas casino can teach you about marketing. These are the five most effective business-to-business word-of-mouth marketing techniques.

Around the Country: Hipster Neighborhoods

Friday is Manufacturing Day, and the United States unveils a "Make It in America" contest. HLN introduces a new weekday series about "Making It In America." Nissan invites "Edisons in training" to win a $50,000 grant (as well as a brand new 2013 Altima). FedEx introduces a small-business grant competition. Brooklyn booms as record rents drive construction. These are America's hippest hipster neighborhoods. New York's first chief digital officer discusses how she achieved 80 percent of the goals laid out in her "digital road map." A supply chain management firm wins an award for small business from the Air Traffic Control Association. A cash mob hits a small business in San Antonio. A small-business owner in Dallas gives 240 customers a month the opportunity to "act like psychopaths."

Your People: Happier and Healthier

Norm Brodsky says it's cost of goods sold that determines whether you can afford another employee: "Once you know your gross margin, it's easy to figure out the new sales you'll need in order to break even on the addition of another employee to the payroll. You simply add up all the new costs associated with that new person - salary, benefits, extra phone usage, travel and entertainment, whatever - and divide by your gross margin." A lawyer suggests that if you're going to fire employees, you should let them know. Barclays' chief executive plans to pay his employees based in part on whether they aregood citizens. Executives at Research in Motion thank their developers with this awful video. New research concludes that the argument that a chief executive will leave if he or she isn't well compensated is bogus. Freelancers are happier and healthier than full-time employees. Here are 13 office trends that will disappear in the next five years. These communication tips will make your business buzz with productivity. A Wisconsin news station uses a replacement weather guy.

Red Tape: On Taxes and Cheating

A workplace pregnancy bill is introduced in the Senate. Clint Stretch discusses taxes and cheating: "The I.R.S. estimates that in 2006 alone, the Treasury missed out on $385 billion in revenue due under the current tax law from a combination of underreporting of income, overstatement of deductions or other benefits, or nonpayment of taxes owed. To put that in perspective, increased revenue of $385 billion annually likely would be enough to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and to permanently patch the alternative minimum tax." The Small Business Administration wants to help entrepreneurs over the age of 50. Thomas P. Hanrahan suggests 10 safeguards against consumer lawsuits, including: "The more variety there is in how you promote, the harder it is for a class-action plaintiff to prove that every consumer was taken in by the same misleading message." Deborah Sweeney offers her small-business checklist for September.

Management: The Return of Myspace

This article discusses the benefits of being done versus being perfect. Mr. Sexy tries to bring back Myspace. The Queen of the Fuzzy Slippers warns us that problem solving is a productivity issue. Nadia Goodman shares three easy exercises to increase your creativity. Here are five incredibly useful tips from TED Talks. Cassie Mogilner says you will feel less rushed if you give time away. Here's how to find the peak time to do everything. Going for a coffee is among the top 20 time-wasting activities. "The Daily Show" weighs in on the replacement refs.

Technology: Verizon's iPhone Secret

Googleintroduces a new service for entrepreneurs and reports that its Play Store hit 25 billion app downloads (thankfully, it's not run by the National Football League). Here's how smartphones are changing health care. A puppet shares 10 useful mobile apps for businesses. A woman gives a dubious explanation for why she is waiting in a line to buy an iPhone. Jim Ditmore suggests six things he'd like to see in a future smartphone. Verizon's iPhone 5 has a secret feature. Here are the 12 best practices for mobile device management for your company. Consumers will soon be able to get their hands on a much-talked-about light field camera. October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. In the near future, developers say car apps will be big and Facebook may be the social network of the past. An 11-year-old girl wins $20,000 from AT&T for a road safety app. Toyota reveals a new robot to help around the house.

Tweets of the Week

@smallbiztrends: I am getting my car serviced and guy says "you've only driven 5K miles in 10 months." I reply "I run a Web business!"

@gitomer: They don't want your brochure. They want answers to their situations and concerns.

The Week's Bests

Jeet Banerjee says that when finding a business idea there's nothing wrong with imitating: "Some of the greatest business ideas have been imitations of others in different ways. If a certain solution has a large market share and not enough competition, you can definitely create a successful business. ... If you find a business with a solid business model, feel free to implement their model into other industries. Many ideas are so strong that they have the ability to work in different niches with just a bit of fine tuning."

Brett Martin explains how to avoid being cheated by a contractor: "Know who's on the job site. You might sign a contract and make payments with a person who isn't doing all of the work. Ask upfront if your crew will subcontract parts of the job to somebody else. If so, do the same research into that person's business as you did for the general contractor. It's awkward to have a perfect stranger show up on your doorstep ready to swing a hammer, but beyond that, the balance between contractors and subs can lead to some of the biggest headaches on a big project - delays, incorrect installations, damage to finished work and all sides blaming the others for errors while no one takes accountability."

This Week's Question: What would you do to revive Myspace?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group , a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.



LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



702 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


October 1, 2012 Monday


At a Romney Home, the View From the Curb


BYLINE: STEVEN GREENHOUSE


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 405 words



HIGHLIGHT: The sanitation worker, Richard Hayes, is interviewed saying, "We're kind of like the invisible people. He doesn't realize, you know, the service we provide."


In a new Web video, one of the nation's most politically active unions - the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees - takes a slap at Mitt Romney and his "47 percent remarks" by a sanitation worker whose route, it says, includes Mr. Romney's oceanfront home in La Jolla, Calif.

The sanitation worker, Richard Hayes, is interviewed and says: "We're kind of like the invisible people. He doesn't realize, you know, the service we provide."

Mr. Hayes then says he lifts 15 to 16 tons of garbage a day. "When I'm 55, 60 years old, I know my body's going to be breaking down," he says. "Mitt Romney doesn't care about that."

The  video then shows  quote from Mr. Romney's 47 percent remarks in big letters: "And so my job is not to worry about these people."

In recent days, the Romney campaign has shown an ad in which Mr. Romney, repeatedly using the word "compassionate," vows to go to bat for America's middle class, saying he will accomplish more for working Americans - will do more to create jobs and reduce unemployment - than President Obama has in his nearly four years in office.

Mr. Romney has said that his "47 percent" comments were "inelegant" and that his campaign is "about the 100 percent of America."

Ryan Williams, a Romney campaign spokesman, attacked the video and said Mr. Romney would promote pro-growth politics that would create economic opportunity for every American.

"It's not surprising that a liberal special interest group is trying to distract from President Obama's failed agenda with dishonest political attacks," Mr. Williams said. "President Obama has consistently sided with union bosses over middle class workers by supporting big government policies that have killed jobs."

The union's "Meet Richard Hayes" video is one of several that Afscme is running that juxtapose interviews of workers in and around the La Jolla-San Diego area with Mr. Romney's dismissive remarks about the 47 percent.

Lee Saunders, president of the union, has said it will spend close to $100 million in this year's campaign, with most going to Democrats.

In releasing the Web videos, Mr. Saunders said in a statement: "Mitt Romney says his job is not to care about nearly half of America. Whatever your political stripe, no one should be so disregarding, dismissive, and disrespectful of half of the country. So we wanted to put a face on the hard working men and woman who Mitt relies on for public services."


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



703 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


October 1, 2012 Monday


Ordinary Lies, Damn Lies and the Debates


BYLINE: ADAM CLYMER


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1320 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama and Mitt Romney will be tempted to use the themes that their pollsters have found effective, whether they are true or false.


Consumer warning: The claims you hear in Wednesday night's presidential debate may be hazardous, if not to your health, then to your relationship to reality.

In a campaign that features some of the most dishonest television ads in history, President Obama and Mitt Romney have been more circumspect about what comes out of their mouths than what is shown before or after they identify themselves and say "and I approve this message." But they will be tempted to use the themes their pollsters have found effective. That may be especially true for Romney, knowing that he is trailing. A huge television audience provides what is perhaps his last best chance to change things.

Even if they restrain themselves and don't parrot their most thoroughly debunked ads, those themes will come up. Romney may not repeat his ad's false charge about welfare that "Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check." If welfare comes up at all, Obama or the moderator, Jim Lehrer, is likely to cite that ad against Romney, and his practice has been to defend his worst ads when challenged.

That is Obama's way, too, with a rare exception. Last week, speaking to the AARP, he played fact-checker to his own campaign. He conceded that its ad (and his own words), claiming that Paul Ryan's Medicare plan would force seniors to pay $6,400 extra, was outdated because Mr. Ryan has modified it since last year. Of course Obama did not go as far as to say that the Romney-Ryan campaign now says future seniors could still get traditional Medicare at no additional cost.

These and other claims, offering far more precision about what the other guy would do wrong than specifics about a candidate's own plans are likely to fill Wednesday's air. Last week three of this campaign's most authoritative fact-checkers - Jim Drinkard of the Associated Press, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Bill Adair of The Tampa Bay Times's PolitiFact.com - gathered at the National Press Club in Washington to forecast how the candidates would try to mislead us Wednesday.

Drinkard said he thought Obama would say that he could finance domestic programs with savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - a claim he made in this year's State of the Union address and his acceptance speech. The flaw, Drinkard pointed out, is that ending wars does not leave a pile of money, just a slightly smaller increase in debt going forward.

Romney, he said, would probably use some variation of his debunked claim that Obama has been apologizing for America abroad. Obama, like his predecessors, has said the United States had made mistakes, Drinkard noted. And contrary to Romney's most recent claims, no statement from Obama or his administration offered any sympathy to the men who attacked and killed the American ambassador and three other diplomats in Benghazi.

Kessler expected to hear Obama recycle the $6,400 cost claim on Medicare. Romney, he said, was likely to renew his assertion that Obama cut $700 billion from Medicare. That "cut" is a hoped-for reduction in the future growth of the program. When Republicans like Newt Gingrich were proposing to curb the growth of entitlements in the '90s, they insisted those were not "cuts."

Adair thought Romney would make the welfare argument and Obama would call his opponent a threat to Medicare.

Accuracy hardly figures in the expectations of the impact of the debate. It is instead widely seen as a chance for Romney, the challenger, to stand up next to an incumbent president and show himself as "presidential," like Ronald Reagan in 1980. Contrarily, remember how Al Gore's sighs during his first debate with George W. Bush hurt him in 2000.

Indeed Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, weighed in at the press club with research showing that debates, misleading statements or not, hardly change any votes. But, she said, they do educate the public about candidates' positions, so once they know who won, they have a clearer idea of what to expect from a new president.

A recent nationwide poll by the center showed the public still has a lot of education ahead because:


The Annenberg Center, which sponsored the event, has been working to promote fact-checking by local television stations, especially of the ads which come from outside groups, not from candidates, and which the stations are not legally obligated to run (although they can charge higher rates for them). She reported that respondents to the poll who visited fact-checking sites or news sites to examine campaign claims were significantly more likely to answer factual questions like those above correctly.

But misleading or downright false claims rarely hurt the perpetrator. It's only when a candidate acquires a reputation for lying or exaggerating that it matters. It happened to Gore in 2000, when the press unfairly seized on his artlessly phrased but accurate claim that in Congress he had been a leader in fighting for funding for what became the Internet. He never said he "invented" the Internet, but that became a damaging press shorthand, recalled whenever he said something else that could be challenged factually.

My own experience as a formal fact-checking reporter was limited, but it supports the idea that verification or contradiction may enlighten a few readers or viewers but does not change votes.

I covered President Carter's debate with Reagan in 1980. The next day I wrote that it produced "almost as many contradictions of fact as disputes over policy." The phrase, "contradictions of fact," was 1980 New York Times-speak for "falsehoods" or "lies."

I wrote that those "contradictions were scattered, like sample ballots on a windy Election Day, throughout the transcript," and often touched on issues that mattered. The article went through many of them. There was Reagan's false denial that he had ever said nuclear non-proliferation, a Carter touchstone, was not "any of our business." There was Carter's claim that Reagan favored voluntary Social Security, a position Reagan had advocated in 1964 but thereafter only said should be studied. And so on.

The article closed on a note that seems relevant today:

For weeks the Carter forces have argued that, in a debate with Mr. Reagan, the president would show himself in much better command of detail. He may have done so, particularly in regard to Mr. Reagan's record. But it is far from clear that the national television audience, estimated at up to 120 million people, was more impressed by detailed arguments, with lots of numbers, than by the relaxed manner and the ability to shrug off an attack that Mr. Reagan regularly displayed.

I know Jim Lehrer has more suggestions for questions than he could ask in a week, let alone 90 minutes. But it might be worthwhile to test the candidates' ability to shrug off questions about their lying ads, and see if their manner remains as calm as Reagan's was in 1980.

An earlier version of this article misstated Richard Nixon's political position in 1960; he was the incumbent vice president, not the incumbent president.

Adam Clymer was a reporter and editor for The Times for 26 years. He retired as the Washington correspondent in 2003.



LOAD-DATE: October 2, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



704 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


October 1, 2012 Monday 10:02 PM EST


National Democrats spending money on Arizona Senate race;
A new national survey shows a pretty even race two days in advance of the first debate.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 799 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

FIRST ON THE FIX: 

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has made a $526,000 ad buy in the Arizona Senate race for the week of Oct. 2-8. It's the first independent expenditure the DSCC has made in the contest. The group has so far spent about $500,000 worth of coordinated money with Democratic nominee Richard Carmona. 

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

The rapidly changing media landscape and what it means for politics - in 1 chart

The WaPo-ABC 'swing state' poll numbers, explained

Seeking more state-based political dynasties...

Why the Native American heritage fight isn't hurting Elizabeth Warren

Republicans bet the House on staying on offense

8 takeaways from the Washington Post-ABC poll

What "Dancing with the Stars" can tell us about the presidential race

John Tierney's challenger holds slight lead over him, Boston Globe poll shows

Welcome to the most important week of the campaign

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* President Obama and Mitt Romney are running even among likely voters, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll showing Obama at 50 percent and Romney at 47 percent. The race has tightened a bit from the 52 percent to 46 percent lead Obama had in the survey in early September. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll also showed an even race nationally, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 47 percent. 

*  Obama's campaign is out with a new TV ad casting Romney as weak on China. "A company called Global Tech maximized profits by paying its workers next to nothing, under sweatshop conditions in China. When Mitt Romney led Bain, they saw Global Tech as a good investment," says the narrator of the ad. The commercial is running in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada. 

* Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan (Wis.) said Obama's decision to draw  down tens of thousands of "surge" troops from Afghanistan was a political calculation. "They just pulled about 22,000 troops in September - which to me is a political decision to have a drawdown before an election - but we're still giving our soldiers the same mission, the same counter-insurgency mission," Ryan said in an interview. 

* Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) leads Rep. Todd Akin (R) 50 percent to 41 percent, according to a Democratic poll conducted for McCaskill's campaign. 

* The League of Conservation Voters launched a $500,000 TV ad buy in the Denver market for a commercial casting Romney as a supporter of "big oil" over the wind industry.

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has purchased $439,000 more in air time in the Indiana Senate race, a contest polls shows remains very tight. The National Republican Senatorial Committee also bought more time for the same week (Oct. 2-8).

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Democrat Keith Fitzgerald, the challenger against Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), has reportedly parted ways with communications director Ana Maria Rosato following a report detailing provocative blog posts she penned. In one entry, she reportedly wrote: "Republicans hate women, immigrants, African Americans, firefighters, police officers, teachers, citizens who vote for Democrats, the poor, the middle class, anyone but each other."

* Democrat Patrick Murphy raised $1 million during the third quarter for his bid against Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), and finished with over $400,000 in the bank. Overall it's a good haul, though West has been a fundraising juggernaut in his own right this cycle and had nearly $3.2 million in his campaign account as of late July. 

* Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) launched a radio ad for Rep. Steve King (R) calling the congressman "the country's leading opponent of Obamacare." King faces former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack (D). 

* The National Republican Congressional Committee will go dark this week in Iowa's 1st District, where Rep. Bruce Braley (D) is facing Republican challenger Ben Lange. 

* Most voters don't believe government spending has helped the economy, according to a Republican poll conducted by the Tarrance Group for Public Notice. The survey shows 52 percent said they believed federal government spending has hurt the overall economy, double the 26 percent who said spending helped the economy. Eighteen percent said it made no difference. 

THE FIX MIX:

Computer remix.

With Aaron Blake

Updated at 5:53 p.m.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



705 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 1, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Bernanke, Romney tap local banks for their financial matters


BYLINE: Abha Bhattarai


SECTION: ; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 532 words


When news broke last month that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had refinanced his mortgage through Cardinal Bank, the McLean-based bank was abuzz.

"We loved it," said Bernard Clineburg, chairman and chief executive of Cardinal Bank. "We got a lot of e-mails and phone calls on that - I had no idea so many people paid attention to [Bernanke's] finances."

But by the next day, it was business as usual.

"People don't care about who gets what, where - they just want a good deal for themselves," Clineburg said. "We don't get additional business because a big name comes in."

Just ask the Bank of Georgetown, where Mitt Romney secured a $20 million loan for his campaign in August. Chairman Curtin Winsor III said business has remained unchanged since National Review Online revealed the source of the Republican presidential candidate's loan a a few weeks ago.

"We have a number of prominent clients here - [Romney] just happened to be disclosed by the media," Winsor said.

Bernanke, who has championed community banks in recent months, declined to comment for this story. Romney's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Local banks picking up some business from high-profile people is not exactly rare in a place like the nation's capital, but big-name politicians typically turn to big-name institutions for personal banking. In May, President Obama disclosed that he had up to $1 million in accounts at JPMorgan Chase, which has assets of $5.16 billion. Romney's disclosures earlier this year showed that he had about $3 million in an account at Swiss bank UBS, which has assets of $1.49 trillion. (Bank of Georgetown, in comparison, has assets of $721.69 million, while Cardinal Bank has $2.7 billion.)

According to 2010 disclosures, the most recent year for which they are available, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had accounts at JPMorgan and Citibank, while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner kept his money at Citibank.

In the past year, however, memberships at local credit unions and community banks have climbed steadily, thanks in part to initiatives such as Bank Transfer Day that encouraged people to close their accounts at large institutions.

"It's not just [Romney] but also larger commercial corporations, the kind that traditionally work with multinational banks, that are moving to smaller banks," Winsor said.

Local municipalities are taking part in the push, too. In the past year, both the District and Montgomery County have introduced programs that call for public funds to be deposited into community banks.

"It's like we're going back to the basics," said Camden R. Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America. "Customers love that they can walk through the door of a community bank on any given day and speak directly to the chairman of that bank."

Clineburg of Cardinal Bank said the Fed chairman has never asked to meet with him, but added, "Of course I would speak with any of our clients."

"Mr. Bernanke - I feel awkward saying anything about that," he said. "Obviously we would never have disclosed anything like that. But if he wants to tell the world, we'll take the kudos."

abha.bhattarai@washingtonpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



706 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 1, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 554 words


QUOTE OF THE WEEK "I mean, this is somebody who kind of makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie."

- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.),talking about her opponent, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

BY THE NUMBERS

$410,000 Amount the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending on a TV ad buy in Maine's U.S. Senate race beginning this week. Believing that front-running independent former governor Angus King will caucus with their party if elected, national Democrats have until now opted to take a hands-off approach in this race. But national Republicans have been hammering King on TV, helping Republican nominee Charlie Summers gain ground in the polls. What's more, Republicans have been fanning the flames by pointing to the silent treatment national Democrats have given their official nominee in the race, Cynthia Dill, who polling shows is running third.

2 The number of times in the past 52 years the presidential candidate who went into the first debate behind wound up ahead after the last debate, according to numbers from Gallup. That means history isn't on Mitt Romney's side. Wednesday's debate is the next major opportunity for Romney to regain some of the momentum he has lost during the past few weeks. But given both candidates' extensive and rigorous preparation in the lead-up to the debates, the odds of either one offering up a campaign-changing misstep isn't very high.

3 The number of congressional campaign TV ads Democrats ranlast week that directly mentioned Romney. From the Senate campaignof Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) to the reelection effort of Rep. DavidCicilline (D-R.I.), blue-state congressional Democrats are increasingly tying their GOP opponents to the Republican presidential nominee. With Romney coming off the toughest stretch of his campaign, there's no better time for Democrats to ramp up their offensive game, especially in states Romney is virtually guaranteed to lose.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS

The week ended. There just hasn't been much good news for Republicans in recent weeks. The presidential race is beginning to tilt toward President Obama, and the GOP's once-promising hopes of retaking the Senate are looking less likely by the day. The good news for the GOP? The first presidential debate is this week, which means they have a chance to recast the race in a new forum. The question from here is whether Mitt Romney is capable of turning in the kind of performance that will do that.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS

Todd Akin. The Missouri congressman declined to drop out of the state's Senate race before the deadline last week, despite pressure from the national Republican Party. His continued presence in the race after his comment about "legitimate rape" means Democrats are heavy favorites to retain what had been a tough seat for them to hold and gives Democrats a much better chance to keep their Senate majority. What's more, Akin's campaign made a couple of other gaffes last week, including his pollster comparing him to cult leader David Koresh and Akin himself saying that his female opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, was more "ladylike" in her last campaign.

- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



707 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 1, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Race is tight, but not in key states


BYLINE: Jon Cohen;Dan Balz


SECTION: A section; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1195 words


On the eve of the first presidential debate, President Obama leads or is at parity with Mitt Romney on virtually every major issue and attribute in what remains a competitive general election, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new survey also highlights an emerging dynamic in the race: the disparity between the state of the race nationally and in battleground states, where campaigning and advertising by the two candidates has been most intense and where the election will be decided.

Nationally, the race is unmoved from early September, with 49 percent of likely voters saying they would vote for Obama if the election were held today and 47 percent saying they would vote for Romney. Among all registered voters, Obama is up by a slim five percentage points, nearly identical to his margin in a poll two weeks ago.

But 52 percent of likely voters across swing states side with Obama and 41 percent with Romney in the new national poll, paralleling Obama's advantages in recent Washington Post polls in Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Obama and Romney have focused outsized efforts in swing states: About a third of all voters in these states say they've heard from each side. Outreach makes a particularly big difference among less-reliable young voters, who proved critical in electing Obama four years ago.

Romney enters Wednesday's debate in Denver under acute pressure to turn around a campaign that has lost ground in states - particularly Florida and Ohio - widely seen as critical to his prospects.

"He's had a tough couple of weeks, let's be honest," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said of his party's presidential contender in a Sunday interview on CBS's "Face the Nation." "He's going to come in Wednesday night, he's going to lay out his vision for America . . . and this whole race is going to turn upside down come Thursday morning."

By a wide margin, voters expecte the president to win the debate matchup, and the new survey points to key obstacles remaining in Romney's way. But there are also signs that some parts of the political landscape have shifted somewhat in favor of the Republican.

A slim majority of voters now see Romney's wealth as a positive, signifying his achieving the "American Dream." Fewer are focusing on issues of economic inequality and the gap between rich and poor. And there has been a big jump in the number of voters who say he has paid his fair share in taxes.

Just after Romney released his 2010 tax return earlier this year that showed he had paid a federal income tax rate of about 14 percent, 66 percent of voters said he had not paid his fair share. Now, after the release of his 2011 return showing a similar tax rate, 48 percent say he is not paying his fair share, and about as many, 46 percent, say he is.

Romney still faces challenges on this terrain. As was the case before the nominating conventions, almost six in 10 voters say that as president, the former Massachusetts governor would do more to favor the wealthy than the middle class. And by 57 percent to 39 percent, most voters say it is fair that some Americans - including senior citizens on Social Security, people on disability and the working poor - do not pay federal income taxes.

Romney's description of the "47 percent" of Americans who pay no income taxes as people who consider themselves "victims" in a secretly recorded video from a springtime fundraiser has stirred controversy and served as fodder for a tough new ad from the Obama campaign.

While Romney loses that argument in the current poll, an anti-government message has a deep vein of support. More than seven in 10 are dissatisfied or angry with the way the federal government is working, and by 51 percent to 43 percent, voters see government programs as doing more to create dependency among the poor than to help them get back on their feet.

Moreover, Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), may be making headway in their argument about the threat of government overreach. Asked whether overregulation or a system that favors the wealthy is the bigger problem, 49 percent of voters say unfairness and 42 percent say overregulation. This is the first time in polls this year that under 50 percent of voters chose unfairness as the larger concern.

Similarly, the percentage of voters who say the government should pursue policies aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor has also dipped, although a slim majority, 52 percent, still support such efforts.

Obama continues to hold double-digit advantages when it comes to being the more friendly and likable of the two, and also as the candidate more voters trust on social issues, women's issues and terrorism. He maintains a big lead when it comes to empathizing with people facing economic problems. And he has a 10-point edge when it comes to handling "an unexpected major crisis," the first time the question has been asked this year.

He and Romney are judged more evenly on some other key issues, including the deficit, health care and Medicare. Romney does not have significant leads in any of the areas tested in the poll, but he has a numerical edge on dealing with the federal budget deficit, 48 percent to 45 percent, among all voters.

On the economy - still the dominant issue in the campaign - voters render a split verdict, with the two tied at 47 percent.

The state of the economy and dissatisfaction over the country's direction continue to be steep obstacles to the president's reelection - but Obama benefits from recent improvements in voters' moods, even if it is mainly Democrats who are feeling better about things.

More voters still give Obama negative ratings for his handling of the economy, but the number of approvers has edged up to 47 percent, its highest level in nearly two years.

The president's overall approval rating among registered voters is now 49 percent positive, 49 percent negative. He tilts positive among all Americans, with 50 percent approving of his job performance and 46 percent disapproving.

Voters are also split on Obama's handling of international affairs. This comes at a time when the administration has been on the defensive over the attacks in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The president gets higher marks when it comes to voters' assessments of his knowledge of world affairs: Sixty-four percent say he knows enough to be effective. At this stage, voters are less convinced about Romney: Fifty-one percent perceive that he has sufficient knowledge of international affairs to be an effective president; 43 percent say he does not.

There is more parity in voter expectations for what will happen with the economy after the election: Few voters are "very confident" that the economy will get back on track in the next year or two, regardless of who wins. Things have seesawed in a positive direction here for Romney: Fifty-one percent of voters are at least somewhat confident things would quickly improve under his administration, up five points from before the conventions.

cohenj@washpost.com

balzd@washpost.com

Peyton M. Craighill and Scott Clement contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



708 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


October 1, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Defining the debate game


BYLINE: E.J. Dionne Jr.


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A15


LENGTH: 751 words


In this week's debate, Mitt Romney has too much to do. President Obama has a great deal to lose. Romney's is the most difficult position. Obama's is the most dangerous.

Romney needs to use the Denver encounter to reverse the slide he has found himself in since the party conventions. While Republican partisans claim that many of the public polls survey too many Democrats and are thus casting Romney as further behind than he is, the behavior of the Romney campaign suggests it does not believe this. Many of its recent strategic moves have smacked of damage control and appear to reflect an understanding that if the campaign stays on its current trajectory, Obama will prevail.

The most dramatic evidence was the decision to air a 60-second spot touting Romney's compassion, clearly an effort to counter the disastrous impact of the leaked video showing the Republican nominee writing off 47 percent of the electorate. The former Massachusetts governor's private words only reinforced months of advertising by Obama and allied groups portraying Romney as a wealthy, out-of-touch champion of the interests of the very rich. Recent polling in swing states has shown that this attack has stuck.

Most striking of all, a campaign that has been relentless in assailing Obama abandoned this approach for a moment in the compassion ad by having Romney declare that "President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families." Challengers are always in a weak position when they have to hug their opponent for validation. This is a defensive move, a sign of how worried Romney is about Obama's lead in the surveys as a friend of the middle class and the needy.

That's why the debate is a strategic conundrum for Romney. On the one hand, he has to use it to change his image, particularly among women and the blue-collar white voters he needs to counter Obama's overwhelming margins among African-Americans and Latinos. This sort of repair work takes debate time and energy away from Romney's primary task, which is to put Obama on his heels about his record.

Romney will have to pull off this two-step at a moment when his campaign has been forced into a course correction. The polls suggest Romney is losing what he once thought were his biggest assets against Obama: Swing-state voters, albeit narrowly, now favor Obama as a future steward of the economy and are in a somewhat better mood about its condition. With Romney not certain he can count on the economy as the issue to power him through the campaign's final weeks, he is scrambling to find other themes. This very process undermines the focus of his efforts and gives his argument a scattershot feel.

Paradoxically, Obama's advantages over Romney create the president's biggest debate challenge. He does not want to take great risks because he doesn't have to. Above all, he wants to avoid a major blunder that would dominate the post-debate news and replace Romney's problems and mistakes as the principal elements in the media's narrative.

Yet concentrating too much on avoiding mistakes could itself prove perilous. An excessively cautious performance could give Romney an opening to take over the debate and make the president look reactive. If Romney showed one thing in the primaries, it is that he can be ferocious when faced with the need to dispatch an opponent. Recall the pummeling Romney gave Newt Gingrich in a Jan. 26 debate before the Florida primary.

And while guarding against any hint of passivity, Obama will have to avoid intimations of arrogance or overconfidence. Al Gore marred an otherwise strong night with his rather dismissive sighs during a 2000 debate with George W. Bush. If a comparable moment from Obama is what Romney will hope for from the debate, Obama's aspiration is for a showdown in which he calmly, perhaps even amiably, maintains focus on the subjects that have consistently given Romney such trouble. Every mention of the number 47 will be a victory for Obama.

One of the shortcomings of the contemporary media environment is that while debates are supposed to be occasions when candidates thrash out matters of consequence thoughtfully and in detail, the outcomes are often judged by snippets that are more about personal character than issues or problems. Journalists, to invoke the most promiscuously deployed phrases, are forever in search of "defining moments" and "game-changers."

By this standard, Romney very much needs that game-changer. Obama can live quite happily without one.

ejdionne@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



709 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


October 1, 2012 Monday 4:19 PM EST


Paul Ryan defends lack of math;
Paul Ryan said Monday that he likes Fox News host Chris Wallace too much to explain the math of Gov. Mitt Romney's tax plan to him.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 330 words


Paul Ryan said Monday that he likes Fox News host Chris Wallace too much to explain the math of Mitt Romney's tax plan to him. 

In his interview with "Fox News Sunday", the GOP vice presidential candidate demurred when asked to show how the plan would be revenue neutral. "It would take me too long to go through all the math," he told Chris Wallace.  

"I like Chris," Ryan told Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes Monday. "I didn't want to get into all the math of this because everybody would start changing the channel." 

Ryan added that "the tax code is filled with so many so deductions and loopholes" that Romney could lower all individual rates by 20 percent but still raise enough revenue to keep the deficit from going up. That's similar to what he told Wallace.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, middle class taxpayers would pay more under the GOP plan, because the rate cut would not be high enough to outweigh the many deductions Romney would have to eliminate to avoid increasing the deficit. Romney's campaign has disputed that study, but his advisers have also promised that if it doesn't work, he will keep higher taxes on the rich, not raise them on the poor. 

Ryan pushed back on President Obama's ad claiming that Romney's plan "raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year," calling the statistic "totally false" and "thoroughly discredited." 

"When you're offering very specific bold solutions confusion can be your enemy's best weapon," Ryan said. But the Post's Fact Checker gave that Obama ad a rare Geppetto Checkmark.

The congressman was also asked about a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll showing that the Medicare debate has helped Democrats. "We were actually winning this Medicare debate in the beginning," Ryan told Sykes, before Obama "put up ads literally telling these falsehoods." Obama's Medicare ads have, in fact, used out-of-date figures from an old and less generous version of Ryan's plan. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



710 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


October 1, 2012 Monday 4:01 PM EST


Everything you need to know about Elizabeth Warren's claim of Native American heritage;
Scott Brown said Elizabeth Warren "checked the box" claiming to be Native American "when clearly she's not." What are the facts on her heritage and Ivy League hires.


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 2721 words


(Relevant segment begins at about the 1:35 mark of video)

"[Elizabeth Warren] checked the box. She had an opportunity, actually, to make a decision throughout her career. When she applied to Penn and Harvard, she checked the box claiming she was Native American, and, you know, clearly she's not."

- Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) during televised debate with Democratic opponent Elizabeth Warren, Sept. 20, 2012

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has focused his campaign's attention back on the self-proclaimed Native American heritage of his Democratic challenger, Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, who listed herself as a minority in professional directories commonly used by recruiters.

The controversy had faded in recent months while Brown maintained a steady lead in the polls. But Warren overtook the Republican incumbent in more recent polls after delivering a high-profile speech at the Democratic National Convention this month.

Brown brought Warren's lineage back into the spotlight with his remarks during a debate last week and with an ad that uses old news accounts instead of his own words to renew skepticism about his opponent's ancestral claims - cleverly avoiding direct accusations. Warren responded with an ad of her own, saying: "Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I'm going to keep fighting for yours."

Scott Brown attack ad

Elizabeth Warren response ad

Brown has used this issue to call the Democratic candidate's character into question. Let's review what is known about Warren's heritage to determine what to make of the senator's assertion that she "checked the box" when she "applied" to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. This is a complex subject, so we will explore it with separate sections on Warren's lineage, the stories from her family, her job qualifications and her listing in the professional directories.

The Facts

Warren's Lineage

Warren has claimed Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage, but the only proof so far seems to be stories she says she heard from family members as a child. Cherokee groups have demanded documentation of the candidate's Native American ancestry, but she hasn't delivered.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society found a family newsletter that alluded to a marriage-license application supposedly listing Warren's great-great-great grandmother as part Cherokee.

The Boston Globe misreported this information, saying that the genealogical society had found the marriage license itself and debunked the notion that Warren lied about her lineage. The paper later acknowledged its mistake in a correction notice.

The author of the family newsletter said she didn't have documentation of the marriage-license application and she doesn't know who sent her the reference.

(Indian Country Today Media Network has posted the family newsletter on its Web site).

The New England genealogical society clarified in a statement that it has found no proof of Warren's self-proclaimed Native American lineage. The group also told The Globe that the candidate's family is not listed in an early-20th century census of major tribes, known as the Dawes Rolls.

An article in Atlantic magazine pointed out that Warren "would not be eligible to become a member of any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes based on the evidence so far surfaced by independent genealogists about her ancestry." That's because her Cherokee ancestors, if she has any, would either be too distant or they never documented their ties in ways that meet the tribes' requirements.

Obviously, this doesn't preclude Warren from having traces of Native American heritage.

Family Tales

What about the stories that Warren claims to have heard from her family? The Globe interviewed an extensive list of the professor's relatives, who had conflicting memories. Some recalled stories of Indian ancestors, others did not.

One second cousin told the Globe that her grandmother had said that her father - one of Warren's relatives - was part Delaware Indian. But the cousin's mother, who did not approve of Native Americans, had always denied that claim, according to the Globe.

Warren's siblings have all backed up the candidate's statements. One brother told the Globe that his grandparents explained to him, after much pleading to get answers as a child, that "your grandfather is part Delaware, a little bitty bit, way back, and your grandmother is part Cherokee," according to the Globe.

But the Globe also noted that some of Warren's cousins "say they know nothing of Native American blood in the family."

Warren explained how she learned about her Indian lineage for a profile in The New Yorker. The professor-turned-politician said her parents had eloped, and she had always wondered why. Over the years, she said, the story emerged that "my parents were very much in love, they wanted to get married, and my father's mother and father said, 'No. You cannot marry her, because she is part Cherokee and part Delaware.'"

Undocumented claims of Native American ancestry, especially those based on family lore, are not uncommon in this country. That's especially true in places like Oklahoma, which ranks second in the U.S. in number of Native American residents and third in percentage of population of that descent, according to U.S. Census data.

Warren contributed recipes to a Native American cookbook called "Pow Wow Chow," published in 1984 by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Okla. She signed her entries "Elizabeth Warren -- Cherokee."

Warren's Resume

Warren taught at the following law schools:

Rutgers University: 1977-1978

University of Houston: 1978-1983

University of Texas (Austin): 1981-1987

University of Pennsylvania: 1987-1992, 1993-1995

Harvard University: 1992-1993, 1995-present

A Boston Globe profile of the Democratic candidate's teaching career noted that her "law degree from Rutgers University made her the only tenured Harvard Law School professor trained at an American public law school."

Regardless of whether Warren's self-proclaimed Native American background helped her win coveted jobs with UPenn and Harvard, she had some notable accomplishments going for her. For example, she did groundbreaking research while teaching at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law on how the nation's bankruptcy code was affecting average families.

Warren and two colleagues studied court records to determine who was filing for bankruptcy and why. They found that single catastrophic events -- such as medical problems or unemployment -- rather than dereliction often caused working-class families to renege on debt.

This work put Warren at the cutting edge of a new school of legal thought that emphasized real impacts on people's lives rather than mere theory. It also led to her first book, "As We Forgive Our Debtors," which won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award after it was published in 1989.

Warren went on to write bankruptcy- related articles for The Yale Law Journal in 1992, and Michigan Law Review in 1993. She didn't write another book until 2000, five years after she started working at Harvard and 11 years after her first book.

After Warren began teaching at Harvard, she served on a commission that helped overhaul the federal bankruptcy laws in 1997. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also appointed her in 2008 to chair a Congressional panel that oversaw the bank bailouts.

Professional Directories

The Boston Herald reported in April that Warren had listed herself as a minority in the American Association of Law Schools directory and that Harvard Law School had touted her supposed lineage when the program faced doubts about faculty diversity.

Critics pounced on the news, suggesting Warren had feigned Native American ancestry to enhance her teaching prospects.

The Democratic candidate stumbled early on in reacting to this controversy. At one point, Warren cited remarks that her aunt Bea made about high cheekbones in the family as evidence of her indigenous ancestry. She said she listed herself as a minority in the professional listings merely to connect with "people like me," noting that it was "not a particularly good use for the directory, because it never happened."

The American Association of Law Schools directory doesn't specify which professors are Native American, but instead clumps all the "minority law teachers" together in a distinct section. As such, it's no surprise that Warren didn't connect with American Indians through the listing - they wouldn't have known she was one of them.

Warren first listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Faculty in 1986, the year before she joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She continued to list herself as a minority until 1995, the year she accepted a tenured position at Harvard Law School.

The former chairman of the American Association of Law Schools, David Bernstein, told the Herald that the group's directory once served as a tip sheet for administrators. "In the old days before the Internet, you'd pull out the AALS directory and look up people," he said. "There are schools that, if they were looking for a minority faculty member, would go to that list and might say, 'I didn't know Elizabeth Warren was a minority.'"

Warren said she didn't know Harvard had used her heritage as proof of diversity until reading about the issue in the news, according to a Herald report. She also denied that she ever tried to gain a professional advantage through her lineage.

Warren also says that she was recruited for these positions - she did not "apply" for them, as Brown asserts.

The Globe obtained a portion of Warren's application to Rutgers, which asks if prospective students want to apply for admission under the school's Program for Minority Group Students. Warren answered "no."

For her employment documents at the University of Texas, Warren indicated that she was "white."

But Penn's 2005 Minority Equity Report identified her as the recipient of a 1994 faculty award, listing her name in bold to signify that she was a minority.

The Herald has twice quoted Charles Fried, the head of the Harvard appointing committee that recommended Warren for her position in 1995, saying that the Democratic candidate's heritage didn't come up during the course of her hiring. "It simply played no role in the appointments process," he said. "It was not mentioned and I didn't mention it to the faculty."

The Herald later quoted Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, saying, "I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned."

Harvard Law School at the time was embroiled in a fierce debate over lack of faculty diversity. African American law professor Derrick Bell took a two-year leave of absence to protest the program's hiring policies, students held frequent demonstrations over the same cause and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination had filed a probable cause finding against the school for denying tenure to Clare Dalton, a liberal instructor.

But several news accounts during that period identified Fried as a conservative faculty member who downplayed the need for change. The Globe described him in April 1992 as an "outspoken defender of the beleaguered faculty appointments committee."

Nonetheless, Fried showed signs of acquiescing around the time that he joined the faculty appointments committee. The Harvard Law Record asked him in a 1992 Q&A, "How aggressively is the appointments committee pursuing women and minority faculty members?" Fried replied, "Very."

When asked by the Record whether he believed in affirmative action, Fried replied, "Yes."

Harvard hired Warren for a temporary position in 1992, and the law school reported a Native American woman on its federally mandated affirmative-action report. The program did not report a Native American woman for 1993 through 1995, during which time Warren was back at Penn - she had spurned Harvard's initial offer of a tenured position, according to a Globe report.

Warren finally accepted a tenured teaching job at Harvard in 1995. An announcement of the professor's hire that year in the Harvard Crimson did not mention her lineage or say that she was the law school's first Native American faculty member.

Warren has said that she provided information about her purported Native American background to the universities after she was hired, saying it "came up in lunch conversation." The campaign declined to tell the Globe whether the Democratic candidate provided information about her lineage to Harvard and Penn verbally or by checking a box on a form.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines "American Indian or Alaska Native" employees as those "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition." A Globe article confirmed that Harvard relied on this standard for its 1992-1993 and 1995-1996 federal affirmative-action reports, for which the school listed a Native American woman -- widely believed to be Warren.

The operative word here is "and." Warren would not qualify as a Native American under these guidelines because she does not meet the second requirement: Official affiliation with a tribe or community.

The Brown campaign provided the following statement to The Fact Checker: "Elizabeth Warren refuses to release her personnel files, which would offer even more revealing information about her employment status. I think people can reasonably conclude she has something to hide."

The Pinocchio Test

Brown said that Warren "checked the box claiming she was Native American" when she applied to Harvard and Penn, suggesting the Democratic candidate somehow gained an unfair advantage because of an iffy ethnic background. But there is no proof that she ever marked a form to tell the schools about her heritage, nor is there any public evidence that the universities knew about her lineage before hiring her.

The senator's debate comments also suggest Warren actively applied for positions with Harvard and Penn, but the evidence suggests the schools recruited her because of her groundbreaking research and writings on bankruptcy. Harvard, in fact, did not give up on her after she first turned down a tenured position with the university.

Some might assume that Warren listed herself as a minority in the law school directories to attract offers from top schools, which would be a pro-active measure. The explanation that she was reaching out to other Native Americans - when she was merely listed as a "minority" - certainly appears suspicious, but there is no conclusive evidence that she used her status in the listing to land a job.

But Warren appears to have been well-qualified for the teaching positions and excelled once she was hired.

The Fact Checker expects accusers to satisfy the burden of proof for their charges. That was the case when Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney tried to avoid taxes with offshore accounts. We awarded four Pinocchios to Reid because the senator lacked conclusive evidence - or much evidence at all, for that matter. We've also knocked the Obama campaign repeatedly for jumping to unwarranted conclusions about Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.

The outstanding questions about Warren's directory listing - and her relying on family lore rather than official documentation to make an ethnic claim - certainly raise serious concerns about Warren's judgment. But in the debate, the Republican incumbent conflated conjecture and sketchy information to make a claim not supported by the available evidence, and so he earns Two Pinocchios.

Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



711 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 1, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 533 words


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I mean, this is somebody who kind of makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie."

- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), talking about her opponent, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), on MSNBC's "Morning Joe"

BY THE NUMBERS

$410,000 Amount the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending on a TV ad buy in Maine's U.S. Senate race beginning this week. Believing that front-running independent former governor Angus King will caucus with their party if elected, national Democrats have until now opted to take a hands-off approach in this race. But national Republicans have been hammering King on TV, helping Republican nominee Charlie Summers gain ground in the polls. What's more, Republicans have been fanning the flames by pointing to the silent treatment national Democrats have given their official nominee in the race, Cynthia Dill, who polling shows is running third.

2 The number of times in the past 52 years the presidential candidate who went into the first debate behind wound up ahead after the last debate, according to numbers from Gallup. That means history isn't on Mitt Romney's side. Wednesday's debate is the next major opportunity for Romney to regain some of the momentum he has lost during the past few weeks. But given both candidates' extensive and rigorous preparation in the lead-up to the debates, the odds of either one offering up a campaign-changing misstep isn't very high.

3 The number of congressional campaign TV ads Democrats ranlast week that directly mentioned Romney. From the Senate campaignof Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) to the reelection effort of Rep. DavidCicilline (D-R.I.), blue-state congressional Democrats are increasingly tying their GOP opponents to the Republican presidential nominee. With Romney coming off the toughest stretch of his campaign, there's no better time for Democrats to ramp up their offensive game, especially in states Romney is virtually guaranteed to lose.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS

The week ended. There just hasn't been much good news for Republicans in recent weeks. The presidential race is beginning to tilt toward President Obama, and the GOP's once-promising hopes of retaking the Senate are looking less likely by the day. The good news for the GOP? The first presidential debate is this week, which means they have a chance to recast the race in a new forum. The question from here is whether Mitt Romney is capable of turning in the kind of performance that will do that.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS

Todd Akin. The Missouri congressman declined to drop out of the state's Senate race before the deadline last week, despite pressure from the national Republican Party. His continued presence in the race after his comment about "legitimate rape" means Democrats are heavy favorites to retain what had been a tough seat for them to hold and gives Democrats a much better chance to keep their Senate majority. What's more, Akin's campaign made a couple of other gaffes last week, including his pollster comparing him to cult leader David Koresh and Akin himself saying that his female opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill, was more "ladylike" in her last campaign.

- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



712 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 1, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


Race is tight, but not in key states


BYLINE: Jon Cohen;Dan Balz


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 1193 words


On the eve of the first presidential debate, President Obama leads or is at parity with Mitt Romney on virtually every major issue and attribute in what remains a competitive general election, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new survey also highlights an emerging dynamic in the race: the disparity between the state of the race nationally and in battleground states, where campaigning and advertising by the two candidates has been most intense and where the election will be decided.

Nationally, the race is unmoved from early September, with 49 percent of likely voters saying they would vote for Obama if the election were held today and 47 percent saying they would vote for Romney. Among all registered voters, Obama is up by a slim five percentage points, nearly identical to his margin in a poll two weeks ago.

But 52 percent of likely voters across swing states side with Obama and 41 percent with Romney in the new national poll, paralleling Obama's advantages in recent Washington Post polls in Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Obama and Romney have focused outsized efforts in swing states: About a third of all voters in these states say they've heard from each side. Outreach makes a particularly big difference among less-reliable young voters, who proved critical in electing Obama four years ago.

Romney enters Wednesday's debate in Denver under acute pressure to turn around a campaign that has lost ground in states - particularly Florida and Ohio - widely seen as critical to his prospects.

"He's had a tough couple of weeks, let's be honest," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said of his party's presidential contender in a Sunday interview on CBS's "Face the Nation." "He's going to come in Wednesday night, he's going to lay out his vision for America . . . and this whole race is going to turn upside down come Thursday morning."

By a wide margin, voters expecte the president to win the debate matchup, and the new survey points to key obstacles remaining in Romney's way. But there are also signs that some parts of the political landscape have shifted somewhat in favor of the Republican.

A slim majority of voters now see Romney's wealth as a positive, signifying his achieving the "American Dream." Fewer are focusing on issues of economic inequality and the gap between rich and poor. And there has been a big jump in the number of voters who say he has paid his fair share in taxes.

Just after Romney released his 2010 tax return earlier this year that showed he had paid a federal income tax rate of about 14 percent, 66 percent of voters said he had not paid his fair share. Now, after the release of his 2011 return showing a similar tax rate, 48 percent say he is not paying his fair share, and about as many, 46 percent, say he is.

Romney still faces challenges on this terrain. As was the case before the nominating conventions, almost six in 10 voters say that as president, the former Massachusetts governor would do more to favor the wealthy than the middle class. And by 57 percent to 39 percent, most voters say it is fair that some Americans - including senior citizens on Social Security, people on disability and the working poor - do not pay federal income taxes.

Romney's description of the "47 percent" of Americans who pay no income taxes as people who consider themselves "victims" in a secretly recorded video from a springtime fundraiser has stirred controversy and served as fodder for a tough new ad from the Obama campaign.

While Romney loses that argument in the current poll, an anti-government message has a deep vein of support. More than seven in 10 are dissatisfied or angry with the way the federal government is working, and by 51 percent to 43 percent, voters see government programs as doing more to create dependency among the poor than to help them get back on their feet.

Moreover, Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), may be making headway in their argument about the threat of government overreach. Asked whether overregulation or a system that favors the wealthy is the bigger problem, 49 percent of voters say unfairness and 42 percent say overregulation. This is the first time in polls this year that under 50 percent of voters chose unfairness as the larger concern.

Similarly, the percentage of voters who say the government should pursue policies aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor has also dipped, although a slim majority, 52 percent, still support such efforts.

Obama continues to hold double-digit advantages when it comes to being the more friendly and likable of the two, and also as the candidate more voters trust on social issues, women's issues and terrorism. He maintains a big lead when it comes to empathizing with people facing economic problems. And he has a 10-point edge when it comes to handling "an unexpected major crisis," the first time the question has been asked this year.

He and Romney are judged more evenly on some other key issues, including the deficit, health care and Medicare. Romney does not have significant leads in any of the areas tested in the poll, but he has a numerical edge on dealing with the federal budget deficit, 48 percent to 45 percent, among all voters.

On the economy - still the dominant issue in the campaign - voters render a split verdict, with the two tied at 47 percent.

The state of the economy and dissatisfaction over the country's direction continue to be steep obstacles to the president's reelection - but Obama benefits from recent improvements in voters' moods, even if it is mainly Democrats who are feeling better about things.

More voters still give Obama negative ratings for his handling of the economy, but the number of approvers has edged up to 47 percent, its highest level in nearly two years.

The president's overall approval rating among registered voters is now 49 percent positive, 49 percent negative. He tilts positive among all Americans, with 50 percent approving of his job performance and 46 percent disapproving.

Voters are also split on Obama's handling of international affairs. This comes at a time when the administration has been on the defensive over the attacks in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The president gets higher marks when it comes to voters' assessments of his knowledge of world affairs: Sixty-four percent say he knows enough to be effective. At this stage, voters are less convinced about Romney: Fifty-one percent perceive that he has sufficient knowledge of international affairs to be an effective president; 43 percent say he does not.

There is more parity in voter expectations for what will happen with the economy after the election: Few voters are "very confident" that the economy will get back on track in the next year or two, regardless of who wins. Things have seesawed in a positive direction here for Romney: Fifty-one percent of voters are at least somewhat confident things would quickly improve under his administration, up five points from before the conventions.

cohenj@washpost.com

balzd@washpost.com

Peyton M. Craighill and Scott Clement contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



713 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 1, 2012 Monday
Regional Edition


Defining the debate game


BYLINE: E.J. Dionne Jr.


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A15


LENGTH: 751 words


In this week's debate, Mitt Romney has too much to do. President Obama has a great deal to lose. Romney's is the most difficult position. Obama's is the most dangerous.

Romney needs to use the Denver encounter to reverse the slide he has found himself in since the party conventions. While Republican partisans claim that many of the public polls survey too many Democrats and are thus casting Romney as further behind than he is, the behavior of the Romney campaign suggests it does not believe this. Many of its recent strategic moves have smacked of damage control and appear to reflect an understanding that if the campaign stays on its current trajectory, Obama will prevail.

The most dramatic evidence was the decision to air a 60-second spot touting Romney's compassion, clearly an effort to counter the disastrous impact of the leaked video showing the Republican nominee writing off 47 percent of the electorate. The former Massachusetts governor's private words only reinforced months of advertising by Obama and allied groups portraying Romney as a wealthy, out-of-touch champion of the interests of the very rich. Recent polling in swing states has shown that this attack has stuck.

Most striking of all, a campaign that has been relentless in assailing Obama abandoned this approach for a moment in the compassion ad by having Romney declare that "President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families." Challengers are always in a weak position when they have to hug their opponent for validation. This is a defensive move, a sign of how worried Romney is about Obama's lead in the surveys as a friend of the middle class and the needy.

That's why the debate is a strategic conundrum for Romney. On the one hand, he has to use it to change his image, particularly among women and the blue-collar white voters he needs to counter Obama's overwhelming margins among African-Americans and Latinos. This sort of repair work takes debate time and energy away from Romney's primary task, which is to put Obama on his heels about his record.

Romney will have to pull off this two-step at a moment when his campaign has been forced into a course correction. The polls suggest Romney is losing what he once thought were his biggest assets against Obama: Swing-state voters, albeit narrowly, now favor Obama as a future steward of the economy and are in a somewhat better mood about its condition. With Romney not certain he can count on the economy as the issue to power him through the campaign's final weeks, he is scrambling to find other themes. This very process undermines the focus of his efforts and gives his argument a scattershot feel.

Paradoxically, Obama's advantages over Romney create the president's biggest debate challenge. He does not want to take great risks because he doesn't have to. Above all, he wants to avoid a major blunder that would dominate the post-debate news and replace Romney's problems and mistakes as the principal elements in the media's narrative.

Yet concentrating too much on avoiding mistakes could itself prove perilous. An excessively cautious performance could give Romney an opening to take over the debate and make the president look reactive. If Romney showed one thing in the primaries, it is that he can be ferocious when faced with the need to dispatch an opponent. Recall the pummeling Romney gave Newt Gingrich in a Jan. 26 debate before the Florida primary.

And while guarding against any hint of passivity, Obama will have to avoid intimations of arrogance or overconfidence. Al Gore marred an otherwise strong night with his rather dismissive sighs during a 2000 debate with George W. Bush. If a comparable moment from Obama is what Romney will hope for from the debate, Obama's aspiration is for a showdown in which he calmly, perhaps even amiably, maintains focus on the subjects that have consistently given Romney such trouble. Every mention of the number 47 will be a victory for Obama.

One of the shortcomings of the contemporary media environment is that while debates are supposed to be occasions when candidates thrash out matters of consequence thoughtfully and in detail, the outcomes are often judged by snippets that are more about personal character than issues or problems. Journalists, to invoke the most promiscuously deployed phrases, are forever in search of "defining moments" and "game-changers."

By this standard, Romney very much needs that game-changer. Obama can live quite happily without one.

ejdionne@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



714 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


October 1, 2012 Monday
Every Edition


Bernanke, Romney tap local banks for their financial matters


BYLINE: Abha Bhattarai


SECTION: Pg. A10


LENGTH: 532 words


When news broke last month that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had refinanced his mortgage through Cardinal Bank, the McLean-based bank was abuzz.

"We loved it," said Bernard Clineburg, chairman and chief executive of Cardinal Bank. "We got a lot of e-mails and phone calls on that - I had no idea so many people paid attention to [Bernanke's] finances."

But by the next day, it was business as usual.

"People don't care about who gets what, where - they just want a good deal for themselves," Clineburg said. "We don't get additional business because a big name comes in."

Just ask the Bank of Georgetown, where Mitt Romney secured a $20 million loan for his campaign in August. Chairman Curtin Winsor III said business has remained unchanged since National Review Online revealed the source of the Republican presidential candidate's loan a a few weeks ago.

"We have a number of prominent clients here - [Romney] just happened to be disclosed by the media," Winsor said.

Bernanke, who has championed community banks in recent months, declined to comment for this story. Romney's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Local banks picking up some business from high-profile people is not exactly rare in a place like the nation's capital, but big-name politicians typically turn to big-name institutions for personal banking. In May, President Obama disclosed that he had up to $1 million in accounts at JPMorgan Chase, which has assets of $5.16 billion. Romney's disclosures earlier this year showed that he had about $3 million in an account at Swiss bank UBS, which has assets of $1.49 trillion. (Bank of Georgetown, in comparison, has assets of $721.69 million, while Cardinal Bank has $2.7 billion.)

According to 2010 disclosures, the most recent year for which they are available, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had accounts at JPMorgan and Citibank, while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner kept his money at Citibank.

In the past year, however, memberships at local credit unions and community banks have climbed steadily, thanks in part to initiatives such as Bank Transfer Day that encouraged people to close their accounts at large institutions.

"It's not just [Romney] but also larger commercial corporations, the kind that traditionally work with multinational banks, that are moving to smaller banks," Winsor said.

Local municipalities are taking part in the push, too. In the past year, both the District and Montgomery County have introduced programs that call for public funds to be deposited into community banks.

"It's like we're going back to the basics," said Camden R. Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America. "Customers love that they can walk through the door of a community bank on any given day and speak directly to the chairman of that bank."

Clineburg of Cardinal Bank said the Fed chairman has never asked to meet with him, but added, "Of course I would speak with any of our clients."

"Mr. Bernanke - I feel awkward saying anything about that," he said. "Obviously we would never have disclosed anything like that. But if he wants to tell the world, we'll take the kudos."

abha.bhattarai@washingtonpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



715 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 30, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


(Psst: We Feel Bad About Our Arms)


BYLINE: By JOYCE PURNICK


SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; THE MIRROR; Pg. 8


LENGTH: 848 words


I HAD expected to keep mum about my problem with Michelle Obama until after the election, but my frustration has gotten the better of me. I can contain it no longer.

I refer not to her politics, but to her arms -- her bare, toned, elegant arms. Enough!

The first lady has made it unacceptable for women to appear in public with covered arms. However innocently, however unwittingly, that is what she has done. Those bare, toned, elegant arms of hers have spawned an epidemic of sleevelessness, exposing arms, arms, arms, and not all of them toned and elegant.

This should not come as a surprise. Not all women are blessed with the first lady's workout discipline or genetic gifts. That is especially true of most of us over the age of, say, 50, or, to be more liberal, 50ish. Or, to be more candid, older.

To us, the naked arm taunts -- as tall taunts short, as lithe taunts square.

This I know because I am significantly beyond the age of 50 or even 50ish, and began anticipating upper arm betrayal many years before reality struck. I spent untold hours swimming (emphasis on the backstroke), lifting weights, struggling through bench dips, perfecting triceps push-ups, speed-walking with flexed hands pumping backward -- all in a very determined effort to keep my arms looking as they did when I was 20. In fact, I started doing all of the above when I was about 20. Once, I let my enthusiasm spill over and shouted ''Yay!'' when a workout instructor announced she was moving from biceps curls to triceps kickbacks. My outburst drew several bemused looks.

Of course, you know where this is going. My triceps have not taken kindly to my disciplinary regime. Let me put it another way: my exercises have failed. A bona fide boomer, I now have the very same arms I remember seeing on my mother, even though she was a powerful swimmer all of her life who had hoped to compete in the 1936 Summer Olympics -- until Hitler made that a most unwise aspiration for a Jewish New Yorker.

Aging as one's mother did is a fact of life, and I should have expected it. I guess I did. Years ago, a physical therapist predicted as much when I asked her to recommend especially rigorous exercises for my recalcitrant triceps. ''Did your mother have, forgive the phrase, flabby upper arms?'' she asked. ''Did your grandmother? Then, sorry, you will.''

O.K., not the worst thing in the world, not by a long shot. But still, hard to take in this world of nonstop arms. Bare arms now often trump cleavage, have you noticed? What woman on the red carpet at this year's Emmys dared hide her shoulders? (Other than Julianne Moore -- for reasons known only to her and her stylist -- and Mayim Bialik, an observant Jew who covered up pretty much everything.)

TLC's ''Say Yes to the Dress,'' an ode to wedding-dress angst, is a virtual parade of arms, some well-cut, some not even close. I did not even have to look at the current issue of Vogue to know that arms would dominate it -- in this case belonging to Keira Knightley. Surely Lady Gaga allowed herself to be pictured on the September cover wearing a semi-sleeved gown just to underscore her fondness for being different.

And when was it, exactly, that female reporters on television adopted slavish sleevelessness as their compulsory fashion statement? Mika Brzezinski seems to favor the look year-round, or close to it, sometimes returning from commercial breaks with a protective sweater. Now, she happens to be able to hold her own in the arms department. May I suggest that some of her colleagues, a growing cohort of copycat arm-flashers, might want to check the mirror before again preening sans sleeves?

I realize that modesty is now a quaint notion in most endeavors, and that quite a few women (not all -- please hold your e-mail blasts) who call themselves reporters have long faced the television cameras determined to advertise attributes other than their brains. But I digress; back to bare arms.

First ladies often set fashion trends, since no matter what their other accomplishments, the country obsesses about their appearance. Nothing new there. Women tried Mamie Eisenhower's bangs, Nancy Reagan's favorite color (red), Hillary Rodham Clinton's headband (and senatorial pantsuits) and, of course, Jackie Kennedy's everything. Every woman wanted to be Jackie, to wear her pillbox hats, trim A-line dresses and chic suits.

However, hats can be modified to fit the head, dresses and suits are routinely altered to fit the body, bangs can be styled. Even red is not rigid; it comes in many shades. But bare arms? Bare arms are bare arms.

If President Obama is re-elected, we will continue to be treated to endless images of the first lady's bare, trim, elegant arms. What a prospect for those of us who have trouble finding T-shirts that cover our problem area.

Then again, Mrs. Obama will be 49 in January. Could it be time for her at least to begin to ponder setting a new fashion trend? Here's a thought. Maybe she could take a cue from her husband and, in a bipartisan gesture, adopt Ann Romney's preference for elbow-length sleeves and red taffeta. Or not.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/fashion/michelle-obama-and-the-exposed-arm.html


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: FLAUNTING IT: Michelle Obama often shows off her toned arms by going sleeveless. Many have followed her lead
some, the author would argue, not wisely. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY TRAVIS LONG/THE NEWS & OBSERVER, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHIL SANDLIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



716 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 30, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


The New Stars in Republican Commercials Attacking Obama: Babies


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 20


LENGTH: 1024 words


Attack ads have come to this: President Obama makes babies cry.

That, in essence, is the message of a new commercial from a Republican ''super PAC'' called Americans for Job Security. And it is just one of several new advertisements that make a blunt appeal to women by using young children.

In the new ad, a worried mother jogs down the street, pushing her daughter in a stroller. ''I run to forget -- forget about my problems,'' she says. ''Now we're facing another recession. The future is getting worse under Obama.'' The camera then cuts to her daughter, whose face puckers as if she is about to burst into tears.

Another new ad from Mitt Romney features a mother reading to her infant daughter. ''Goodnight Moon'' perhaps? ''The Giving Tree''?

More like the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

''Dear daughter,'' the mother says, ''your share of Obama's debt is over $50,000, and it grows every day.''

Babies are one of the oldest props in politics and advertising, whether they are being kissed at campaign rallies or swaddled in fresh linens in a commercial for laundry detergent. And, of course, a little girl starred in the grandfather of all attack ads, President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 ''Daisy'' commercial.

But this year babies have surfaced in ads designed to help Republicans chip away at the overwhelming support the president enjoys among women.

''Hey, it works for Johnson & Johnson, so there's no reason it wouldn't work in politics,'' said Alex Castellanos, a Republican advertising consultant.

In an advertising war that has already shattered records for both the number of commercials broadcast and the money spent, babies serve another useful purpose: they stand out amid the cacophony of ads that tend to blur together with their gloomy piano soundtracks and fretful-sounding announcers.

As blunt as some of these ads may sound -- and they are almost always produced by teams of ad men, not ad women -- there was copious research behind each line in the script. After months of conducting focus groups, Republican strategists found that appeals about the longevity of the deficit are more likely to stick with politically independent women when the issue is framed as a problem that their children will inherit.

Take a new ad from Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC. It begins with a montage of pictures of a little girl. There she is, a baby, playing with a toy. There she is holding her father's hand as he leads her to kindergarten.

''Is her future getting better?'' a female announcer asks. ''Obama has added more debt than the first 41 presidents combined. Is America going forward or backward?''

Republicans said their goal -- and perhaps the key to this election -- was to appeal to the 2012 version of the ''soccer mom.'' This is a woman burdened by worry -- over precarious family finances, her aging parents or her adult children who have moved back into the house. Call them the anxiety moms.

''Why are jobs and the economy the No. 1 issue? Because women say so, and remember women make up 52 percent of the electorate,'' said David Winston, a Republican pollster. ''This is not an abstraction for them. How am I going to pay my grocery bills? How am I going to pay my mortgage? There are constant reminders of the difficult situation we're in.''

Commercials like these intentionally serve as yet another reminder that all is not well with the economy. But the trick is in not going overboard on the doom and gloom, both sides acknowledge. It is one thing to lay out a case for why Mr. Obama has failed women during his presidency, but those arguments can easily be defeated by hyperbole.

And some say these ads do exactly that.

''Scare tactics are nothing new, but with babies? This goes to new extremes,'' said Linda Kaplan Thaler, a longtime advertising executive who has worked on the presidential campaigns for both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton and now runs the Madison Avenue firm Publicis Kaplan Thaler.

Ms. Kaplan Thaler said these ads could backfire, especially if women see them as being too preachy. ''It's all about having a dialogue,'' she said. ''And when you are in a situation where you are telling voters something and not inviting a real conversation, you run the risk of voters having their own conversation.'' And these days that conversation often takes place on late-night comedy shows, where, Ms. Kaplan Thaler said, these ads could ultimately end up, as political punch lines.

With their measured appeals to voters who are disappointed in Mr. Obama's leadership, the ads echo a theme that Republican groups started emphasizing last spring after finding that harsh attacks on the president were falling flat with swing voters, especially women.

Crossroads GPS, which was founded by Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists, produced an ad called ''Basketball'' that featured a woman talking about how her faith in the president was shaken by, among other things, the fact that the economy was still so bad that her unemployed adult children had to move back home.

That ad and the two new super PAC ads featuring babies were all produced by McCarthy Hennings Media, the firm run by Larry McCarthy. His notable work includes the 1988 Willie Horton commercial, which hurt Michael S. Dukakis by linking him to a notorious prison furlough program, and ''Ashley's Story'' in 2004, which told the story of a young girl whose mother died in the Sept. 11 attacks. After meeting George W. Bush at a campaign rally, the young girl says, ''He's the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I'm safe.''

Republican strategists believe they have found a damning message in the baby ads -- one that indirectly raises the question ''Are you better off than you were four years ago?''

But some Republicans cautioned that without answering what logically flows from that question -- will you be better off four years from now? -- they will not break through.

''People know they're in a hole,'' said Mr. Castellanos, the Republican advertising consultant. ''What they want is to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. They don't want you to throw the baby in the tunnel.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/us/politics/gop-strategists-ads-warn-president-obama-is-bad-for-babies.html


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Republican strategists found that appealing to politically independent women about a deficit that their children might inherit was more likely to capture their attention. The Romney team and outside groups are trying to chip away at the president's support with women. ''Why are jobs and the economy the No. 1 issue?'' said David Winston, a Republican pollster. ''Because women say so.'' (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT
RESTORE OUR FUTURE
AMERICANS FOR JOB SECURITY)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



717 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 30, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


The Conservative Case for Obamacare


BYLINE: By J. D. KLEINKE.

A resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a former health care executive and the author of the novel ''Catching Babies.''


SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; OPINION; Pg. 4


LENGTH: 1373 words


Washington

IF Mitt Romney's pivots on President's Obama's health care reform act have accelerated to a blur -- from repealing on Day 1, to preserving this or that piece, to punting the decision to the states -- it is for an odd reason buried beneath two and a half years of Republican political condemnations: the architecture of the Affordable Care Act is based on conservative, not liberal, ideas about individual responsibility and the power of market forces.

This fundamental ideological paradox, drowned out by partisan shouting since before the plan's passage in 2010, explains why Obamacare has only lukewarm support from many liberals, who wanted a real, not imagined, ''government takeover of health care.'' It explains why Republicans have been unable since its passage to come up with anything better. And it explains why the law is nearly identical in design to the legislation Mr. Romney passed in Massachusetts while governor.

The core drivers of the health care act are market principles formulated by conservative economists, designed to correct structural flaws in our health insurance system -- principles originally embraced by Republicans as a market alternative to the Clinton plan in the early 1990s. The president's program extends the current health care system -- mostly employer-based coverage, administered by commercial health insurers, with care delivered by fee-for-service doctors and hospitals -- by removing the biggest obstacles to that system's functioning like a competitive marketplace.

Chief among these obstacles are market limitations imposed by the problematic nature of health insurance, which requires that younger, healthier people subsidize older, sicker ones. Because such participation is often expensive and always voluntary, millions have simply opted out, a risky bet emboldened by the 24/7 presence of the heavily subsidized emergency room down the street. The health care law forcibly repatriates these gamblers, along with those who cannot afford to participate in a market that ultimately cross-subsidizes their medical misfortunes anyway, when they get sick and show up in that E.R. And it outlaws discrimination against those who want to participate but cannot because of their medical histories. Put aside the considerable legislative detritus of the act, and its aim is clear: to rationalize a dysfunctional health insurance marketplace.

This explains why the health insurance industry has been quietly supporting the plan all along. It levels the playing field and expands the potential market by tens of millions of new customers.

The rationalization and extension of the current market is financed by the other linchpin of the law: the mandate that we all carry health insurance, an idea forged not by liberal social engineers at the Brookings Institution but by conservative economists at the Heritage Foundation. The individual mandate recognizes that millions of Americans who could buy health insurance choose not to, because it requires trading away today's wants for tomorrow's needs. The mandate is about personal responsibility -- a hallmark of conservative thought.

IN the partisan war sparked by the 2008 election, Republicans conveniently forgot that this was something many of them had supported for years. The only thing wrong with the mandate? Mr. Obama also thought it was a good idea.

The same goes for health insurance exchanges, another idea formulated by conservatives and supported by Republican governors and legislators across the country for years. An exchange is as pro-market a mechanism as they come: free up buyers and sellers, standardize the products, add pricing transparency, and watch what happens. Market Economics 101.

In the shouting match over the health care law, most have somehow missed another of its obvious virtues: it enshrines accountability -- yes, another conservative idea. Under today's system, most health insurers (and providers) are accountable to the wrong people, often for the wrong reasons, with the needs of patients coming last. With the transparency, mobility and choice of the exchanges, businesses and individuals can decide for themselves which insurers (and, embedded in their networks, which providers) deserve their dollars. They can see, thanks to the often derided benefits standardization of the reform act, what they are actually buying. They can shop around. And businesses are free to decide that they are better off opting out, paying into funds that subsidize individuals' coverage and letting their employees do their own shopping, with what is, in essence, their own compensation, relocated to the exchanges.

Back when the idea of letting businesses and consumers pick their own plans -- with their own money on an exchange -- first floated around Washington, advocates called them ''association health plans.'' They, too, would have corrected for the lack of transparency, mobility and choice in local insurance markets by allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines. They were the cornerstone of what would have been the Bush administration's reform plan (had the administration not been distracted by other matters). After the rejection of ''Hillarycare'' in the mid-'90s, association health plans emerged as the centerpiece of pro-market, Republican thinking about health reform -- essentially what would become Romneycare, extended via federal law to cover the entire country. So much for Mr. Romney's argument that his plan in Massachusetts was an expression of states' rights. His own party had bigger plans for the rest of the country, and they looked a lot like Obamacare.

But perhaps the clearest indication of the conservative economic values underlying the act is its reception by many Democrats. The plan has few champions on the left precisely because it is not a government takeover of health care. It is not a single-payer system, nor ''Medicare for all''; it does not include a ''public option,'' a health plan offered by a federal insurer. It is a ratification of market ideas, modified to address problems unique to health insurance.

Mr. Obama's plan, which should be a darling of the right for these principles, was abandoned not for its content, but rather for politics. Neither side is blameless here. The White House could not have been more ham-fisted in the way it rammed the bill through Congress. The Republicans in the House and Senate lashed back with a vengeance, sifting through the legislative colossus for boogeymen like ''death panels,'' and when they could not find things sufficiently alarmist, they simply invented them.

Clear away all the demagogy and scare tactics, and Obamacare is, at its core, Romneycare across state lines. But today's Republicans dare not own anything built on principles of economic conservatism, if it also protects one of the four horsemen of the social conservatives' apocalypse: coverage for the full spectrum of women's reproductive health, from birth control to abortion.

Social conservatives' hostility to the health care act is a natural corollary to their broader agenda of controlling women's bodies. These are not the objections of traditional ''conservatives,'' but of agitators for prying, invasive government -- the very things they project, erroneously, onto the workings of the president's plan. Decrying the legislation for interfering in the doctor-patient relationship, while seeking to pass grossly intrusive laws involving the OB-GYN-patient relationship, is one of the more bizarre disconnects in American politics.

Obamacare draws fire from this segment of ''conservatives'' because it fortifies the other side in their holy war. Coverage for birth control and abortion has not been introduced by the law; but it has been neutralized economically across all health plans, as part of the plan's systemic effort to streamline fragmented health insurance markets and coverage.

The real problem with the health care plan -- for Mr. Romney and the Republicans in general -- is that political credit for it goes to Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Romney is in a terrible fix trying to spin his way out of this paradox and tear down something he knows is right -- something for which he ought to be taking great political credit of his own.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/why-obamacare-is-a-conservatives-dream.html


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY GETTY IMAGES) DRAWING (DRAWING BY LINCOLN AGNEW)


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



718 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 30, 2012 Sunday


Sept. 29: As Iowa Goes, So Go Romney's Chances?


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 489 words



HIGHLIGHT: The national tracking polls were published on Saturday, and continued to show President Obama in a fairly strong position.


Saturday, not Sunday, is the news media's traditional day of rest -- and so it is the slowest day of the week for polling.

But the national tracking polls were published on Saturday, and continued to show President Obama in a fairly strong position. He held at a six-point lead in the Gallup national tracking poll, although his approval rating dipped. He also maintained a rough seven-point advantage in the RAND Corporation's online tracking poll. Mr. Obama also pulled ahead to take a two-point lead in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, which had differed from other polling firms by previously showing a tie. (Another national tracking poll, from Ipsos, is not regularly published on the weekends.)

We're getting to the point in the campaign where a day on which the polls are in line with expectations is a winning one for Mr. Obama, since Mr. Romney trails in the race and now has just five full weeks to make the deficit up. Mr. Obama's forecast rose slightly, to an 83.8 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, from 82.7 percent on Friday.

The Des Moines Register also published its highly regarded Iowa Poll on Saturday, which showed Mr. Obama with a four-point lead, 49 to 45. This result is quite consistent with other polls of Iowa published since the conventions, which also have shown Mr. Obama ahead by four points on average.

The only prior Des Moines Register poll this year, which was conducted in February, showed Mitt Romney up by two points instead. So this represents a favorable trend for Mr. Obama.

On the other hand, the same polling firm, Selzer & Co., conducted a national poll for Bloomberg recently, which gave Mr. Obama a six-point advantage. So they have Mr. Obama polling slightly worse in Iowa than he is nationally.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast concurs: we have Mr. Obama projected to win Iowa by 3.6 percentage points on Nov. 6, smaller than his 4.1-point advantage in the national race.

These are marginal differences, obviously, but they matter some in terms of the electoral math since any hope that Mr. Romney has of winning the Electoral College without Ohio probably requires him to win Iowa. In the simulations that we ran on Saturday, Mr. Romney won the election only 2 percent of the time that he lost Iowa.

This isn't a good poll for Mr. Romney, but it does suggest that Iowa hasn't gotten out of hand, and that it could trend back toward him if the national race does.

Iowa ranks seventh on our list of tipping-point states, but it packs a lot of bang for the buck because its television markets are fairly small and cheap to advertise in. We estimate that a dollar spent there will do twice as much to sway the Electoral College outcome as one spent in Florida.



LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



719 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 30, 2012 Sunday


Aurora Victim Pushes Gun Issue With New Ad


BYLINE: ERICA GOODE


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 545 words



HIGHLIGHT: A victim in the Colorado massacre used a new ad to push the issue of gun control.


Stephen Barton was supposed to spend the fall teaching English in Russia on a Fulbright fellowship. But shortly after midnight on July 20, a gunman in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., derailed those plans.

Still recovering from the wounds he sustained when the gunman opened fire that night, killing 12 and injuring dozens more, Mr. Barton has decided to devote his energies this fall to something entirely different: Trying to get the presidential candidates to address the touchy issue of guns and gun violence.

In a television advertisement to begin airing on Monday, Mr. Barton, seated in an empty movie theater, tells viewers that despite the injuries from 25 shotgun pellets that embedded themselves in his face and neck, he was lucky.

"In the next four years, 48,000 Americans won't be so lucky, because they'll be murdered with guns in the next president's term, enough to fill over 200 theaters," Mr. Barton, 22, says in the advertisement. "So when you watch the presidential debates, ask yourself, 'Who has a plan to stop gun violence?'"

The advertisement will appear in Colorado and on cable stations in Washington and other cities across the country, said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition of more than 725 mayors that is sponsoring the ad as part of its "Demand a Plan" campaign.

After the shooting spree in Aurora, both presidential candidates offered their condolences to the victims and their families. President Obama traveled to Aurora to visit the injured. Mitt Romney said, "Our hearts break with the sadness of this unspeakable tragedy."

But any discussion of how to prevent gun violence has been noticeably absent in presidential campaigns that have focused on the economy and foreign policy issues.

Both candidates have backed gun control measures in the past, Mr. Obama as a legislator and Mr. Romney as governor of Massachusetts, where he raised the fee for gun licenses and signed a ban on assault weapons.

But at a time when national surveys show waning support among Americans for tougher gun laws and when politicians who broach the issue face swift attack by the National Rifle Association and other gun groups, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have instead stressed their support for Second Amendment rights.

Mr. Barton, who graduated from Syracuse University in May and had stopped in Aurora for a few days while on a cross-country bicycle trip, said that before the shooting, he had followed the presidential campaign from a distance.

But what happened that night at the theater made it much more personal.

"I couldn't sit back and be just frustrated at the direction of the discourse or the lack of discourse," he said. "I guess I just felt some responsibility."

He deferred his Fulbright fellowship and, through contacts in Washington, signed up with the mayors' coalition, where he will spend the year working on gun control issues.

"We have this giant shooting and it's really sad that we can't even have a discussion about it," he said. "Really, more than anything, we just want to candidates to start talking about it in a way that's beyond just condolences."

And if the advertisement fails to convince the candidates, he added, "At least it might convince regular American citizens to think about it."


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



720 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
She the People


September 30, 2012 Sunday 8:15 PM EST


The presidential debate: Don't forget, Romney and Obama, that sticking to the script can be lethal, too;
If you're hoping that next week's first presidential debate in Denver is a sober exchange on the issues facing our nation, well, that makes one of us.


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


LENGTH: 778 words


If you're hoping that next week's first presidential debate in Denver will be a sober exchange on the issues facing our nation, well, that makes one of us.

Because all that would really mean is we'd get yet another volley of talking points we've already heard ad nauseum. No, I'm not convinced there is anything moderator Jim Lehrer could say to coax policy specifics out of Mitt Romney. Or to get Barack Obama to explain why he changed his mind on closing Gitmo, or when he became such a fan of George W. Bush's security-for-civil liberties trade-offs.

We could easily have a whole "Why'd you change your mind on that?"-themed evening, with Mitt called to do more than repeat yet again that RomneyCare was just marvelous for Massachusetts but terrible when imposed on the rest of us. Only, that would require candidates who feel compelled by public demand to supply real answers.

Instead of expecting more from the candidates, partisans on both sides prefer put the onus on the moderator; in fact, insulting the questioner has become such a winning diversionary strategy that for a second there it looked like Newt Gingrich's springboard to the nomination.

That's one reason presidential debates rarely elicit anything we haven't heard before - and why they've become increasingly heavy on the light 'n' lively, as when John King asked Republican candidates to look him in the eye and give it up: Elvis or Johnny Cash? Deep dish or thin crust?

If what we're really looking for is a human moment, though, shouldn't we just go all in and require each contestant on 'So you want to be president' to mime his answers, or deliver the talking points in the foreign language of his choosing? (You can tell a lot about a man, after all, by the way he declines and conjugates.)

Another option is a 'Fact Checker' debate, with the Post's Glenn Kessler and other prominent FCs taking turns reading aloud from their oeuvre: Hey, Barack Obama, you say that 90 percent of our deficit was run up by Bushie's high-spending ways? As this is hooey, sir, why do you persist?

And you, Mitt Romney, stop laughing and pray tell us why you keep saying that Mr. Obama has undercut the welfare work requirements when he has done no such thing.

Not happening, I know - and not because Lehrer won't try.

Yet somehow, despite the best efforts of the candidates, human moments will occur, as when George H.W. Bush sneaked a very costly peek at his watch, or Rick Perry forgot the third agency he was vowing to put out of business, or Mitt Romney said, "I'll bet you $10,000," or Barack Obama told his future secretary of state, "You're likable enough, Hillary.''

A few years ago, I asked Kitty Dukakis about the one her husband lived through as the Democratic nominee in '88, when CNN's Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis how far he'd go to defend her: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty for the killer?"

"No, I don't, Bernard,'' Dukakis responded. "And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. And I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We've done so in my own state."

Now, with a little Newt-style righteous anger, he might have punched Shaw in the jaw and won the race. But that's not what happened, and for Kitty, the moment hasn't faded: "It's like it was yesterday; I remember what I had on and how, when he looked over and saw my expression,'' he realized he had just driven off a cliff. "I was furious. We were in the car with our daughter Andrea afterwards, and I said, "What were you thinking?" and he said he was so tired and had answered the question so many times on the death penalty, and it was just automatic.

"Andrea went on and on about it, and I remember thinking he was going to be burdened by that from then on, even by his supporters. You're so exhausted, and you're going to make mistakes."

This wasn't a moment that revealed the real Michael Dukakis, though, but was just the opposite. Though Dukakis blew his one chance to electrocute a rhetorical attacker, he did something out of the public view that was a lot harder. That is, he supported his wife year in and year out as she struggled with the very real mugger that is depression. "His understanding about women,'' she told me, "is something the public didn't understand."

And the moral of that story, candidates, is that it's also possible to self-immolate by sticking too closely to the script.

Melinda Henneberger is Post political writer and anchors the paper's 'She the People' blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



721 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 30, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


A man ofthe monied masses


BYLINE: Dana Milbank


SECTION: A section; Pg. A19


LENGTH: 747 words


Meet Willard Mitt Romney, champion of the common man.

"Do you realize over the last four years the median income in America has dropped every single year?" the candidate asked his supporters during a stop in Springfield on Thursday. "At the same time," he added, "food prices are up; electric prices are up; gasoline prices have doubled. These are tough times for the American people."

But these are not tough times for a lot of Romney boosters, judging by the look of things.

Romney made this stand for the little guy in the heart of Fairfax County, which has the second-highest household income in the nation (neighboring Loudoun County is No. 1). Seemingly everyone in the 200-strong crowd was fingering a smartphone, with the exception of the guy in the polo shirt in the second row reading the Wall Street Journal, and the linen-blazer-clad guy in the eighth row checking the Drudge Report on his iPad.

To get a better sense of the economic status of the invitation-only crowd, I strolled the parking lot - and found a fleet of BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and Cadillac SUVs, as well as Jaguar, Audi, Lexus and BMW sports cars. Parked near the entrance: a black Rolls-Royce Silver Spur III with vanity plates saying "MY ROLLS" - and a Romney bumper sticker.

When it comes to speaking up for the downtrodden, Romney isn't just another man of the people. He is the Rolls-Royce of populists.

With evidence building that his prospects have been hurt by his dismissal of nearly half the country as moochers, Romney has been making it his job to worry about the 47 percent of Americans he famously said it wasn't his job to worry about.

But when such an appeal is attempted by a man who has painstakingly crafted for himself a public image combining Scrooge McDuck and Thurston Howell III, there is bound to be a certain amount of awkwardness and inconsistency.

Consider, for example, his new ads showing him speaking in front of a sooty group of coal miners, as various miners in their Appalachian accents criticize President Obama's coal policy. The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported that the miners who appeared behind Romney in the ad had had their shifts ended early - and they weren't paid for the lost time while they stood on the stage behind Romney.

There was also Romney's unexpected response when NBC's Ron Allen asked him about his difficulty connecting with middle-class Americans. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance," Romney boasted. "I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record." But the next morning, he took the stage in Springfield and announced: "I got to get rid of Obamacare" - the nationwide program based on his own empathetic program in Massachusetts.

Finally, there was this I-feel-your-pain moment in Ohio on Wednesday: "I've been across this country; my heart aches for the people I've seen," Romney proclaimed in a high school gymnasium. Inconveniently, a 1985 video surfaced the next day in which Romney explained that Bain Capital's goal with the companies it invested in was "to harvest them at a significant profit" - as if they were organs being removed from an accident victim.

Why the Baron of Bain would be making a late appeal to the downtrodden is obvious. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that Americans regard Romney's "47 percent" remarks negatively, 54 percent to 32 percent. Respondents who self-describe as independent, the all-important demographic, regarded the comments even more negatively.

But the outreach to the 47 percent he privately regarded as parasites furthers the impression that Romney is inauthentic - an impression encouraged by the candidate's contrived delivery. In Springfield, Romney at one point recited a verse from "America the Beautiful" (though he has stopped singing the tune) and later held his left arm aloft, pretending to be the Statue of Liberty lifting her torch.

The event was at an American Legion hall, so Romney, who didn't mention veterans affairs in his acceptance address at the Republican convention, built up the part of his usual stump speech where he promises to increase Pentagon spending while cutting taxes and the deficit. He thanked the "heroes" in the hall - and then Romney, champion of the little guy, took his motorcade to downtown Washington for a $50,000-a-plate fundraising dinner at the Renaissance Hotel.

Even a man of the people needs to eat.

danamilbank@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



722 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 30, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost 2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost


SECTION: ; Pg. Y04


LENGTH: 409 words


1 KidsPost covers the campaign

Presidential elections happen every four years, so many of our readers may not remember the last one. (If you're 9 now, you were only 5 for the 2008 election, and even in Washington there aren't that many politically aware kindergartners.) So KidsPost has planned special coverage to explain what all the fuss is about. With each special section, we'll have an activity that you can do so you can better understand how presidential campaigns work. We'll also have quizzes at kidspost.com.

1 Today's KidsPost - Debates: Explains the presidential debates and why they are important. If you can imagine taking a test where you could be asked science, math or history questions with 100 million people watching to see if you get it right, you have a sense of what a presidential debate is like.

1 October 14 - Campaign ads:If you watch TV in the Washington area, you've probably seen campaign ads for President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Like ads for cereal or toys that make you want to buy a product, the goal of these commercials is to get you to vote for - or against - a certain candidate. After telling you more about such ads, we'll encourage you to come up with your own campaign ads.

1 November 4 - Voting: On November 6, Americans will vote for president. Who can vote? Who does vote? Do all votes count equally? We'll get you ready for Election Day (November 6) with a map of the United States that you can color as you watch the results come in.

1 Where you can learn more

Here are some places to find great, kid-friendly information about elections and the presidency. Always ask a grown-up (parent or teacher) before going online.

1 For kids: Nickelodeon has a Web site with kids talking about the issues, the job of the president and biographies of the candidates. You can check it out at www.nick.com/shows/ kids-pick-the-president.

The U.S. government has a kid-friendly site that includes a very cool, downloadable poster about how the president is chosen. It's at www.kids.gov.

1 For teachers: The Washington Post's Newspapers in Education Web site has many resources to use in the classroom. You can go to nie.washingtonpost.com and search such keywords as "election," "campaign," "debate" and "voting."

PBS offers teachers videos, lesson plans and games related to the election through its PBS Learning Media site.


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



723 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 30, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition


A man ofthe monied masses


BYLINE: Dana Milbank


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A19


LENGTH: 747 words


Meet Willard Mitt Romney, champion of the common man.

"Do you realize over the last four years the median income in America has dropped every single year?" the candidate asked his supporters during a stop in Springfield on Thursday. "At the same time," he added, "food prices are up; electric prices are up; gasoline prices have doubled. These are tough times for the American people."

But these are not tough times for a lot of Romney boosters, judging by the look of things.

Romney made this stand for the little guy in the heart of Fairfax County, which has the second-highest household income in the nation (neighboring Loudoun County is No. 1). Seemingly everyone in the 200-strong crowd was fingering a smartphone, with the exception of the guy in the polo shirt in the second row reading the Wall Street Journal, and the linen-blazer-clad guy in the eighth row checking the Drudge Report on his iPad.

To get a better sense of the economic status of the invitation-only crowd, I strolled the parking lot - and found a fleet of BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and Cadillac SUVs, as well as Jaguar, Audi, Lexus and BMW sports cars. Parked near the entrance: a black Rolls-Royce Silver Spur III with vanity plates saying "MY ROLLS" - and a Romney bumper sticker.

When it comes to speaking up for the downtrodden, Romney isn't just another man of the people. He is the Rolls-Royce of populists.

With evidence building that his prospects have been hurt by his dismissal of nearly half the country as moochers, Romney has been making it his job to worry about the 47 percent of Americans he famously said it wasn't his job to worry about.

But when such an appeal is attempted by a man who has painstakingly crafted for himself a public image combining Scrooge McDuck and Thurston Howell III, there is bound to be a certain amount of awkwardness and inconsistency.

Consider, for example, his new ads showing him speaking in front of a sooty group of coal miners, as various miners in their Appalachian accents criticize President Obama's coal policy. The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported that the miners who appeared behind Romney in the ad had had their shifts ended early - and they weren't paid for the lost time while they stood on the stage behind Romney.

There was also Romney's unexpected response when NBC's Ron Allen asked him about his difficulty connecting with middle-class Americans. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance," Romney boasted. "I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record." But the next morning, he took the stage in Springfield and announced: "I got to get rid of Obamacare" - the nationwide program based on his own empathetic program in Massachusetts.

Finally, there was this I-feel-your-pain moment in Ohio on Wednesday: "I've been across this country; my heart aches for the people I've seen," Romney proclaimed in a high school gymnasium. Inconveniently, a 1985 video surfaced the next day in which Romney explained that Bain Capital's goal with the companies it invested in was "to harvest them at a significant profit" - as if they were organs being removed from an accident victim.

Why the Baron of Bain would be making a late appeal to the downtrodden is obvious. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that Americans regard Romney's "47 percent" remarks negatively, 54 percent to 32 percent. Respondents who self-describe as independent, the all-important demographic, regarded the comments even more negatively.

But the outreach to the 47 percent he privately regarded as parasites furthers the impression that Romney is inauthentic - an impression encouraged by the candidate's contrived delivery. In Springfield, Romney at one point recited a verse from "America the Beautiful" (though he has stopped singing the tune) and later held his left arm aloft, pretending to be the Statue of Liberty lifting her torch.

The event was at an American Legion hall, so Romney, who didn't mention veterans affairs in his acceptance address at the Republican convention, built up the part of his usual stump speech where he promises to increase Pentagon spending while cutting taxes and the deficit. He thanked the "heroes" in the hall - and then Romney, champion of the little guy, took his motorcade to downtown Washington for a $50,000-a-plate fundraising dinner at the Renaissance Hotel.

Even a man of the people needs to eat.

danamilbank@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 30, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



724 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 30, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


2012 presidential election coverage at KidsPost


SECTION: KIDSPOST; Pg. Y04


LENGTH: 397 words


1 KidsPost covers the campaign

Presidential elections happen every four years, so many of our readers may not remember the last one. (If you're 9 now, you were only 5 for the 2008 election, and even in Washington there aren't that many politically aware kindergartners.) So KidsPost has planned special coverage to explain what all the fuss is about. With each special section, we'll have an activity that you can do so you can better understand how presidential campaigns work. We'll also have quizzes at kidspost.com.

1 Today's KidsPost - Debates:Explains the presidential debates and why they are important. If you can imagine taking a test where you could be asked science, math or history questions with 100 million people watching to see if you get it right, you have a sense of what a presidential debate is like.

1 October 14 - Campaign ads:If you watch TV in the Washington area, you've probably seen campaign ads for President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Like ads for cereal or toys that make you want to buy a product, the goal of these commercials is to get you to vote for - or against - a certain candidate. After telling you more about such ads, we'll encourage you to come up with your own campaign ads.

1 November 4 - Voting:On November 6, Americans will vote for president. Who can vote? Who does vote? Do all votes count equally? We'll get you ready for Election Day (November 6) with a map of the United States that you can color as you watch the results come in.

1 Where you can learn more

Here are some places to find great, kid-friendly information about elections and the presidency. Always ask a grown-up (parent or teacher) before going online.

1 For kids:Nickelodeon has a Web site with kids talking about the issues, the job of the president and biographies of the candidates. You can check it out at www.nick.com/shows/ kids-pick-the-president.

The U.S. government has a kid-friendly site that includes a very cool, downloadable poster about how the president is chosen. It's at www.kids.gov.

1 For teachers: The Washington Post's Newspapers in Education Web site has many resources to use in the classroom. You can go to nie.washingtonpost.com and search such keywords as "election," "campaign," "debate" and "voting."

PBS offers teachers videos, lesson plans and games related to the election through its PBS Learning Media site.


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



725 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 29, 2012 Saturday 11:20 PM EST


The devastatingly bad candidacy of Todd Akin - and how it could cost Republicans the Senate;
How Todd Akin may cost Republicans the Senate majority.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1024 words


Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's latest assertion that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) had acted more "ladylike" in her 2006 Senate campaign than in their 2012 race affirmed a very simple fact: Akin is just not a very good candidate.

But to simply say that Akin is bad in some ways sells him short - or long - when it comes to the broader impact that his candidacy is having on his party's hopes of re-taking the Senate majority in November.

Until Akin uttered the words "legitimate rape" shortly after winning his party's Senate nomination last month, most political handicappers - including us - expected that he would beat McCaskill.

"The outcome in Missouri was a near certainty before Todd Akin's comment," said one senior Republican Senate strategist. "McCaskill was going to lose. Now, she is likely to win."

After all, McCaskill had won the seat in 2006 by less than 50,000 votes in one of the best Democratic years in modern memory. And in the intervening six years, McCaskill emerged as one of the most prominent backers of President Obama - not exactly a popular figure in the Show Me State these days - and weathered a brutal run of bad press over a private airplane owned by her and her husband.

Of course, all of that is out the window now that Akin has turned the race into a referendum on his own views in things like "legitimate rape" and the term "ladylike."

And when it comes to the narrow math for Republicans re-taking the Senate majority, the shift in Missouri amounts to a major moment. If Akin had simply said nothing after winning the Republican nomination, we would be talking about three Democratic seats looking likely to go the GOP's way: Nebraska, North Dakota and Missouri. Assuming they could hold their own seats - with the exception of Maine where independent former governor Angus King is the likely winner - that would have put Senate Republicans just two seats from the majority - even if Obama was re-elected.

Take Missouri out of that mix and what looked decidedly doable for Senate Republicans starts to look far less likely. With Missouri almost certainly a Democratic hold, Republicans now need not only to hold Nebraska and North Dakota but then also pick up three more seats to be in the majority in 2013. 

Here's our latest Senate map:

Make no mistake: Akin blowing up the Missouri race isn't the only factor in Republicans' increasingly dim chances of winning control. Movement toward Democrats in Indiana, Massachusetts, Virginia and Wisconsin - to name a few - has made a Senate majority a longer shot than it looked even two weeks ago.

But Akin's implosion - not to mention the massive amount of national media his collapse has engendered - is, without question, a blow that is felt far beyond the borders of Missouri.

If Republicans come up short on Nov. 6, Akin's name will be added to an ignominious list that includes the likes of Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle - candidates who cost the GOP not just Senate seats, but a chance at the majority.

Polls show tight races in N.C., Nev., Va.: In contrast to other recent swing state polls, a few polls released Thursday evening suggest certain states remain very close.

A new Suffolk University survey showed the presidential and Senate races remain close in Virginia, and swing state polls from NBC News and Marist College show tight races in Nevada and North Carolina.

Suffolk shows Obama at 46 percent and Romney at 44 percent. In the Senate race, former senator George Allen (R) and former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine (D) are tied at 44 percent.

Polls last week, including from the Washington Post, showed Obama and Kaine beginning to edge ahead in their respective races. The Post poll showed both Obama and Kaine up by eight points each.

Marist shows Obama up two points each in Nevada and North Carolina - within the margin of error - but he leads by seven points in a third state, New Hampshire.

The Nevada poll also shows Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) leading by six points - his biggest edge to date in a live-interviewer poll.

Fixbits:

Romney ties defense cuts to veterans committing suicide.

Romney's campaign issues a memo lowering debate expectations.

Paul Ryan says Romney won't be taking it easy on Obama at debates.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will not reinstate the state's Voter ID law in time for the November election. The law has been struck down by two lower courts.

Another new ad from Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) hits Elizabeth Warren (D) on her claim to Native American heritage, saying she "got caught" in a lie.

In the Wisconsin Senate race, former governor Tommy Thompson (R) hits Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) for being "too liberal for Pelosi."

A new Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad in Virginia hits Allen on women's issues.

A new poll conducted for Rep. Martin Heinrich's (D-N.M.) Senate campaign shows him leading former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) 52 percent to 44 percent. The poll was conducted by GBA Strategies.

A new ad from North Carolina Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton's (D) gubernatorial campaign features African-Americans criticizing GOP nominee Pat McCrory for not understanding them. McCrory's campaign says it reeks of desperation.

A new poll shows New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) remains popular despite some bad jobs numbers in the state. Voters also largely don't care about his confrontational style.

The Chamber of Commerce is spending $3.3 million on behalf of Republicans in key California congressional races.

A little fun: What our beer says about our politics.

David Petraeus offers a semi-denial of a report that suggested he might become president of Princeton University.

Must-reads:

"D.C. Third Ward Mormons would welcome Romney, even though most are Democrats" - Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post 

"RNC cuts ties with firm over voter registration allegations" - Michael Isikoff, NBC News

"Some Administration Officials Were Concerned About Initial White House Push Blaming Benghazi Attack on Mob, Video" - Jake Tapper, ABC News

"Obama Fills in Blanks of Romney's Plans, and G.O.P. Sees Falsehoods" - Michael Cooper, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



726 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 29, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 129 words


Expectations for Obama

Mitt Romney's campaign is trying to raise expectations for President Obama heading into the first of three presidential debates, with a top adviser to the Republican nominee arguing in a memorandum Thursday that Obama enjoys a "significant advantage" going into the debates.

Beth Myers, a senior adviser to Romney, wrote in the memo that Obama has "natural gifts and extensive seasoning under the bright lights of the debate stage," while noting that Wednesday's showdown in Denver will be Romney's first everone-on-one presidential debate. She also predicted that Obama would try to turn the debate into a"90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent."

- Philip Rucker


LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



727 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 29, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST


In a debate, there's more than one way to self-immolate


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 774 words


If you're hoping that next week's first presidential debate in Denver will be a sober exchange on the issues facing our nation, well, that makes one of us.

Because all that would really mean is we'd get yet another volley of talking points we've already heard ad nauseam. No, I'm not convinced there is anything moderator Jim Lehrer could say to coax policy specifics out of Mitt Romney. Or to get Barack Obama to explain why he changed his mind on closing Gitmo, or when he became such a fan of George W. Bush's security-for-civil -liberties trade-offs.

We could easily have a whole "Why'd you change your mind on that?"-themed evening, with Romney called to do more than repeat yet again that RomneyCare was just marvelous for Massachusetts but terrible when imposed on the rest of us. Only, that would require candidates who feel compelled by public demand to supply real answers.

Instead of expecting more from the candidates, partisans on both sides prefer to put the onus on the moderator; in fact, insulting the questioner has become such a winning diversionary strategy that for a second there it looked like Newt Gingrich's springboard to the nomination.

That's one reason presidential debates rarely elicit anything we haven't heard before - and why they've become increasingly heavy on the light 'n' lively, as when John King asked Republican candidates to look him in the eye and give it up: Elvis or Johnny Cash? Deep dish or thin crust?

If what we're really looking for is a human moment, though, shouldn't we just go all in and require each contestant on "So You Want to Be President" to mime his answers, or deliver the talking points in the foreign language of his choosing? (You can tell a lot about a man, after all, by the way he declines and conjugates.)

Another option is a "Fact Checker" debate, with The Post's Glenn Kessler and other prominent FCs taking turns reading aloud from their oeuvre: Hey, Obama, you say that 90 percent of our deficit was run up by Bushie's high-spending ways? As this is hooey, sir, why do you persist?

And you, Romney, stop laughing and pray tell us why you keep saying that Obama has undercut the welfare work requirements when he has done no such thing.

Not happening, I know - and not because Lehrer won't try.

Yet somehow, despite the best efforts of the candidates, human moments will occur, as when George H.W. Bush sneaked a very costly peek at his watch, or Rick Perry forgot the third department he was vowing to put out of business, or Romney said, "I'll bet you $10,000," or Obama told his future secretary of state, "You're likable enough, Hillary.''

A few years ago, I asked Kitty Dukakis about the one her husband lived through as the Democratic nominee in '88, when CNN's Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis how far he'd go to defend her: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty for the killer?"

"No, I don't, Bernard,'' Dukakis responded. "And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. And I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We've done so in my own state."

Now, with a little Newt-style righteous anger, he might have punched Shaw in the jaw and won the race. But that's not what happened, and for Kitty, the moment hasn't faded: "It's like it was yesterday; I remember what I had on and how, when he looked over and saw my expression,'' he realized he had just driven off a cliff. "I was furious. We were in the car with our daughter Andrea afterwards, and I said, 'What were you thinking?' and he said he was so tired and had answered the question so many times on the death penalty, and it was just automatic.

"Andrea went on and on about it, and I remember thinking he was going to be burdened by that from then on, even by his supporters. You're so exhausted, and you're going to make mistakes."

This wasn't a moment that revealed the real Michael Dukakis, though, but was just the opposite. Though Dukakis blew his one chance to electrocute a rhetorical attacker, he did something out of the public view that was a lot harder. That is, he supported his wife year in and year out as she struggled with the very real mugger that is depression. "His understanding about women,'' she told me, "is something the public didn't understand."

And the moral of that story, candidates, is that it's also possible to self-immolate by sticking too closely to the script.

hennebergerm@washpost.com

Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.


LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



728 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 29, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST


Romney attacked on Chinese investments


BYLINE: Philip Rucker;Jia Lynn Yang


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 696 words


The Obama campaign has attacked Republican Mitt Romney this week for having investments in China, saying it is inappropriate for a presidential nominee to be investing so much money there.

Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland (D), a campaign co-chairman, said it "defies logic." "It may not be illegal, it may not be unethical, but it is unseemly," he said in an interview. "It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

Yet the economies of the United States and China have become so intertwined in recent years that many everyday Americans are invested in the Chinese economy, whether its through international mutual funds or stock holdings in U.S. multinationals - including Apple, McDonald's and General Motors - that have vast operations in China.

When it comes to the world's second-biggest economy, it's hard to avoid being an investor.

"There are many ways to invest in China. It's not uncommon," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist for the Davidson Co. "It's a normal emerging markets strategy."

Still, Romney's investments are strikingly more international than President Obama's, based on financial disclosures from both candidates.

Romney's tax returns released this month show that the candidate's individual trust last year sold off thousands of shares in seven Chinese corporations, including some state-owned firms, for a profit of more than $8,600.

The Chinese firms are among more than 1,000 companies Romney's blind trust and his family's trust invested in and later sold in 2011, according to the tax returns. The companies span the globe, ranging from the French aircraft manufacture Dassault Aviation to Canadian yoga clothing retailer Lululemon.

The investments are managed not by Romney but by his longtime trustee R. Bradford Malt. Some investments Malt makes directly; others are investments in funds that he does not necessarily control.

"As we've said before, the trustee of the blind trust has said publicly that he will endeavor to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney's positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment," said Michele Davis, a Romney campaign spokeswoman.

Obama's investments are squarely domestic.

Based on a public financial disclosure report, the president holds $1 million to $5 million in U.S. Treasury notes, which are sold with terms of two, three, five, seven and 10 years. He also holds $600,000 to $1.25 million in Treasury bills, which have terms of one year or less.

Obama also has $200,000 to $450,000 invested in a Vanguard 500 index fund, which invests in 500 of the largest U.S. companies.

The president has targeted his opponent for his holdings in Chinese firms this week, saying Romney's investments contradicted his views on China.

"When you see these ads promising to get tough on China - it feels like the fox saying, 'You know, we need more secure chicken coops.' I mean, it's just not credible," Obama said in a speech in Bowling Green, Ohio, this week.

Romney, meanwhile, has been assailing Obama for what he calls the president's failure to crack down on the Chinese for manipulating their currency and counterfeiting products patented and designed in the United States, part of a stark appeal to workers across the industrial Midwest.

"When people cheat, that kills jobs," Romney said at a rally in Ohio on Tuesday. "China has cheated. I will not allow that to continue."

As his presidential campaign was ramping up in the summer of 2011, Romney's individual blind trust sold shares in the seven companies, including the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC); Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, one of the country's biggest state-owned banks; and Tencent, China's biggest Internet company.

The trust also sold off shares in dozens of other foreign companies during this period, which was particularly volatile for the stock market. Rating agency Standard & Poor's had just downgraded U.S. debt for the first time in history and the euro crisis appeared to be on the verge of dragging down the rest of the global economy.

ruckerp@washpost.com

yangjl@washpost.com

Steven Mufson contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



729 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 29, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 116 words


Expectations for Obama

Mitt Romney's campaign is trying to raise expectations for President Obama heading into the first of three presidential debates, with a top adviser to the Republican nominee arguing in a memorandum Thursday that Obama enjoys a "significant advantage" going into the debates.

Beth Myers, a senior adviser to Romney, wrote in the memo that Obama has "natural gifts and extensive seasoning under the bright lights of the debate stage," while noting that Wednesday's showdown in Denver will be Romney's first everone-on-one presidential debate. She also predicted that Obama would try to turn the debate into a"90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent."

- Philip Rucker


LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



730 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 29, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition


In a debate, there's more than one way to self-immolate


BYLINE: Melinda Henneberger


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 774 words


If you're hoping that next week's first presidential debate in Denver will be a sober exchange on the issues facing our nation, well, that makes one of us.

Because all that would really mean is we'd get yet another volley of talking points we've already heard ad nauseam. No, I'm not convinced there is anything moderator Jim Lehrer could say to coax policy specifics out of Mitt Romney. Or to get Barack Obama to explain why he changed his mind on closing Gitmo, or when he became such a fan of George W. Bush's security-for-civil -liberties trade-offs.

We could easily have a whole "Why'd you change your mind on that?"-themed evening, with Romney called to do more than repeat yet again that RomneyCare was just marvelous for Massachusetts but terrible when imposed on the rest of us. Only, that would require candidates who feel compelled by public demand to supply real answers.

Instead of expecting more from the candidates, partisans on both sides prefer to put the onus on the moderator; in fact, insulting the questioner has become such a winning diversionary strategy that for a second there it looked like Newt Gingrich's springboard to the nomination.

That's one reason presidential debates rarely elicit anything we haven't heard before - and why they've become increasingly heavy on the light 'n' lively, as when John King asked Republican candidates to look him in the eye and give it up: Elvis or Johnny Cash? Deep dish or thin crust?

If what we're really looking for is a human moment, though, shouldn't we just go all in and require each contestant on "So You Want to Be President" to mime his answers, or deliver the talking points in the foreign language of his choosing? (You can tell a lot about a man, after all, by the way he declines and conjugates.)

Another option is a "Fact Checker" debate, with The Post's Glenn Kessler and other prominent FCs taking turns reading aloud from their oeuvre: Hey, Obama, you say that 90 percent of our deficit was run up by Bushie's high-spending ways? As this is hooey, sir, why do you persist?

And you, Romney, stop laughing and pray tell us why you keep saying that Obama has undercut the welfare work requirements when he has done no such thing.

Not happening, I know - and not because Lehrer won't try.

Yet somehow, despite the best efforts of the candidates, human moments will occur, as when George H.W. Bush sneaked a very costly peek at his watch, or Rick Perry forgot the third department he was vowing to put out of business, or Romney said, "I'll bet you $10,000," or Obama told his future secretary of state, "You're likable enough, Hillary.''

A few years ago, I asked Kitty Dukakis about the one her husband lived through as the Democratic nominee in '88, when CNN's Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis how far he'd go to defend her: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty for the killer?"

"No, I don't, Bernard,'' Dukakis responded. "And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. And I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We've done so in my own state."

Now, with a little Newt-style righteous anger, he might have punched Shaw in the jaw and won the race. But that's not what happened, and for Kitty, the moment hasn't faded: "It's like it was yesterday; I remember what I had on and how, when he looked over and saw my expression,'' he realized he had just driven off a cliff. "I was furious. We were in the car with our daughter Andrea afterwards, and I said, 'What were you thinking?' and he said he was so tired and had answered the question so many times on the death penalty, and it was just automatic.

"Andrea went on and on about it, and I remember thinking he was going to be burdened by that from then on, even by his supporters. You're so exhausted, and you're going to make mistakes."

This wasn't a moment that revealed the real Michael Dukakis, though, but was just the opposite. Though Dukakis blew his one chance to electrocute a rhetorical attacker, he did something out of the public view that was a lot harder. That is, he supported his wife year in and year out as she struggled with the very real mugger that is depression. "His understanding about women,'' she told me, "is something the public didn't understand."

And the moral of that story, candidates, is that it's also possible to self-immolate by sticking too closely to the script.

hennebergerm@washpost.com

Melinda Henneberger is a Post political writer and anchors the paper's She the People blog. Follow her on Twitter at @MelindaDC.


LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



731 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 29, 2012 Saturday
Suburban Edition


Romney attacked on Chinese investments


BYLINE: Philip Rucker;Jia Lynn Yang


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 696 words


The Obama campaign has attacked Republican Mitt Romney this week for having investments in China, saying it is inappropriate for a presidential nominee to be investing so much money there.

Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland (D), a campaign co-chairman, said it "defies logic." "It may not be illegal, it may not be unethical, but it is unseemly," he said in an interview. "It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

Yet the economies of the United States and China have become so intertwined in recent years that many everyday Americans are invested in the Chinese economy, whether its through international mutual funds or stock holdings in U.S. multinationals - including Apple, McDonald's and General Motors - that have vast operations in China.

When it comes to the world's second-biggest economy, it's hard to avoid being an investor.

"There are many ways to invest in China. It's not uncommon," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist for the Davidson Co. "It's a normal emerging markets strategy."

Still, Romney's investments are strikingly more international than President Obama's, based on financial disclosures from both candidates.

Romney's tax returns released this month show that the candidate's individual trust last year sold off thousands of shares in seven Chinese corporations, including some state-owned firms, for a profit of more than $8,600.

The Chinese firms are among more than 1,000 companies Romney's blind trust and his family's trust invested in and later sold in 2011, according to the tax returns. The companies span the globe, ranging from the French aircraft manufacture Dassault Aviation to Canadian yoga clothing retailer Lululemon.

The investments are managed not by Romney but by his longtime trustee R. Bradford Malt. Some investments Malt makes directly; others are investments in funds that he does not necessarily control.

"As we've said before, the trustee of the blind trust has said publicly that he will endeavor to make the investments in the blind trust conform to Governor Romney's positions, and whenever it comes to his attention that there is something inconsistent, he ends the investment," said Michele Davis, a Romney campaign spokeswoman.

Obama's investments are squarely domestic.

Based on a public financial disclosure report, the president holds $1 million to $5 million in U.S. Treasury notes, which are sold with terms of two, three, five, seven and 10 years. He also holds $600,000 to $1.25 million in Treasury bills, which have terms of one year or less.

Obama also has $200,000 to $450,000 invested in a Vanguard 500 index fund, which invests in 500 of the largest U.S. companies.

The president has targeted his opponent for his holdings in Chinese firms this week, saying Romney's investments contradicted his views on China.

"When you see these ads promising to get tough on China - it feels like the fox saying, 'You know, we need more secure chicken coops.' I mean, it's just not credible," Obama said in a speech in Bowling Green, Ohio, this week.

Romney, meanwhile, has been assailing Obama for what he calls the president's failure to crack down on the Chinese for manipulating their currency and counterfeiting products patented and designed in the United States, part of a stark appeal to workers across the industrial Midwest.

"When people cheat, that kills jobs," Romney said at a rally in Ohio on Tuesday. "China has cheated. I will not allow that to continue."

As his presidential campaign was ramping up in the summer of 2011, Romney's individual blind trust sold shares in the seven companies, including the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC); Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, one of the country's biggest state-owned banks; and Tencent, China's biggest Internet company.

The trust also sold off shares in dozens of other foreign companies during this period, which was particularly volatile for the stock market. Rating agency Standard & Poor's had just downgraded U.S. debt for the first time in history and the euro crisis appeared to be on the verge of dragging down the rest of the global economy.

ruckerp@washpost.com

yangjl@washpost.com

Steven Mufson contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



732 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 28, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


In Virginia, Nominees Reach Out To Military


BYLINE: By HELENE COOPER and ASHLEY PARKER; Helene Cooper reported from Virginia Beach, and Ashley Parker from Springfield, Va.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 874 words


VIRGINIA BEACH -- In case anyone is wondering, Virginia is up for grabs this election. So, with 39 days to go, President Obama and Mitt Romney dueled in the commonwealth on Thursday, both trying to lock up support from voters with ties to the military.

''I still believe in you!'' President Obama yelled out at the sea of white, brown and black faces gathered before him at Farm Bureau Live, an outdoor amphitheater in this naval town. ''If you stand with me and work with me, we'll win the Tidewater again. We'll win Virginia again.''

Appearing just a few miles from the shipyard where his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, last month named Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate, Mr. Obama was fighting hard to loosen the Republican Party's traditional grip on military votes. Virginia Beach and Norfolk are crucial to both campaigns' hopes of winning this state in what is now widely viewed as one of the closest races in the remaining swing states.

To that end, just six days before the first debate, both candidates made another of their frequent visits to Virginia. Mr. Romney campaigned at a veterans event in the Washington suburb of Springfield, where he promised to stop ''devastating job losses'' among veterans if he is elected. He also proposed more help for service members returning from war in need of psychological treatment.

''We have huge numbers of our men and women returning from conflict that are seeking counseling, psychological counseling, and can't find that counseling within our system,'' Mr. Romney said. He also vowed to build an American military ''so strong that no one wants to test it.''

Virginia has 13 electoral votes, but pathways to victory for either man, particularly Mr. Romney, get steeper if the state is taken out of their column.

With each day that moves him closer to Nov. 6, and perhaps because of recent polling that shows him ahead in Ohio and Florida, the president has appeared more relaxed, almost as if he is starting to enjoy himself. Surrounded by 7,000 screaming supporters -- a crowd as diverse as the Tidewater region, with its naval base and countless veterans, has become -- Mr. Obama seemed determined to hang on to his small but steady lead in Virginia polls.

''How's it going, Virginia Beach?'' Mr. Obama shouted into the microphone. He quickly attached himself to Senator Jim Webb, the retired Marine who had introduced him in a lengthy windup that trumpeted the president's support for military families. ''I could not be prouder of a man who has served his country his entire life, as a Marine, as a secretary of the Navy,'' the president said of Mr. Webb, who is not seeking re-election.

The crowd ate it up, especially as they were primed beforehand by the cast of colorful characters that make up Virginia Democratic politics. Representative Robert C. Scott, sporting an accent straight out of ''Dukes of Hazzard,'' seemed a particular favorite. He drew roars when he recounted how in 2008, CNN called Virginia for Obama for the first Democratic presidential win here in 40 years, and then, ''two minutes later,'' called the election for Mr. Obama. It was a story meant to demonstrate how central winning the state has become to American presidential aspirations.

As is now becoming the norm before the president comes on stage, when Al Green's ''Let's Stay Together'' -- part of the campaign playlist -- came on, the crowd took over, belting it out the way the president did at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. By the time Mr. Webb came out to introduce the president, the din sounded like a Bruce Springsteen concert.

The Obama campaign also unleashed a new two-minute television ad in which Mr. Obama pitches an economic plan he says will create one million manufacturing jobs, cut oil imports and increase education jobs. He characterized it as a ''new economic patriotism.''

Mr. Romney was tying himself to the military as well. He talked about his experience on Wednesday night in Toledo, when his private charter plane was getting ready to take off as an honor flight -- full of veterans who had spent the day in Washington visiting the war memorials -- was returning home. Mr. Romney delayed his own flight in order to greet all of the veterans as they walked down the gangway of their plane, and one elderly, wheelchair-bound World War II veteran, he said, stood out in his mind.

''I said hello to him and shook his hand, and then he turned to go through this long alleyway that had been set up with flags and people who were there to recognize each of the veterans,'' Mr. Romney recalled. ''But he stopped the person who was pushing him, pushing him in the wheelchair, and then he reached inside his coat and took out a flag. And waved it.''

Mr. Romney also talked about how, as governor of Massachusetts, he was attending a ceremony to send his state's servicemen and -women off to Iraq and Afghanistan, when one of the soldiers raised his hand with an interesting proposal.

''He said, 'I have a young lady that I'm in love with, and we haven't been married and I'm going to go off to conflict -- could you marry us?' '' Mr. Romney said. ''And I said, 'I don't see why not.' ''

He said he called the two up to the front of the audience and married them right there.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/politics/in-virginia-obama-and-romney-reach-out-to-military.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama made his entrance Thursday at a campaign event at Farm Bureau Live, an amphitheater in Virginia Beach. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



733 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 28, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


September, November: 40 Precious Days to Spend on Early Vote


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY; Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Orange City, Iowa.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1131 words


1:21 a.m. | Updated DES MOINES - A stream of voters arrived at election offices across Iowa to cast their ballots. Waves of absentee ballots have started landing in mailboxes in 30 other states. And more than a month before what the calendar says is Election Day, President Obama began delivering his closing argument to voters.

The rise of early voting, which got under way here on Thursday, is changing the rhythms of how Americans elect their presidents. The president is not as fixated on winning more votes than Mitt Romney on Election Day, but on executing a plan to accrue more votes over the next 40 days.

For millions of Americans, the election is no longer on a fixed date. It is increasingly becoming another item on the fall checklist, a civic duty steeped in the convenience of everyday life. The development is reshaping campaigns, with Election Day becoming Election Month for as much as 40 percent of the electorate this year, including voters in the vital swing states of Ohio, Florida, Colorado and others.

"It has made the October surprises way less relevant," said Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, who has built the president's re-election strategy around the growing trend of voting early. One example: a two-minute ad that began running Thursday summing up Mr. Obama's case for re-election. "In a close election, you can increase your number of voters in a very important way."

The president opened his campaign speeches this week with a pitch for early voting, imploring Ohio voters, "I need you to start voting six days from now." It was a not-so-subtle effort to bottle his early success and capitalize on what several polls find is an edge over Mr. Romney in swing states, which could shrink as the remainder of the race unfolds, with the first debate next Wednesday.

As the bell tolled eight from the clock tower of the Polk County Courthouse on Thursday, signaling the moment when the polls here would open, a line stretched down the street from the election office. A subject of conversation among those waiting was a statistic from 2008: Mr. Obama received fewer votes than Senator John McCain on Election Day in Iowa and some other states, but Mr. Obama won those states because his plan was built around a month of voting, not a day.

The rise of early voting, which is allowed with few restrictions in 32 states and the District of Columbia, has opened a new front in efforts to maximize turnout and find voters through exhaustive micro-targeting. An open question, though, is whether making voting more convenient will mean that more people actually take part in the presidential election.

An Iowa law, which national election observers say is the only one of its kind in the country, allows a campaign to gather 100 signatures and petition election officials to create a temporary voting location aimed at serving a particular constituency.

Here in Des Moines, Democrats requested that a voting site be opened Oct. 20 at La Tapatia Tienda Mexicana, a restaurant. Republicans requested a site be opened on the same day at Johnston Evangelical Free Church. Election officials granted both requests, along with those for voting sites at libraries, grocery stores and community centers.

When Michelle Obama visits the University of Northern Iowa on Friday, her chief task will not be simply to deliver a speech. She will ask supporters to cast their ballots on the spot, a few steps away at a voting site requested by the campaign and approved by election officials.

While some people will vote in person, even more will do so by mail. The Iowa Secretary of State's office said Democrats had a 5-to-1 edge over Republicans in the numbers of absentee ballots requested statewide - largely because of efforts by the Obama campaign - but Republicans said the numbers would level out over the next five weeks.

"We are going to close that gap in Iowa," said Rick Wiley, political director of the Republican National Committee, which is overseeing early-voting efforts as part of its national field program. He added, "In years past, we were slow to embrace it, but it's foolish not to."

The proportion of people nationwide casting early ballots climbed from 23 percent in 2004 to 31 percent in 2008, according to Michael McDonald, who studies early voting at George Mason University. This year, party strategists estimate that up to 40 percent of voters will cast ballots before Nov. 6, but the proportion is far higher in many battleground states.

In Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, advisers to both campaigns say as many as 70 percent of ballots will be cast before Nov. 6. And in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, the campaigns estimate at least 30 percent of people will vote early. Virginia and New Hampshire are the only battleground states without widespread, no-excuse early voting.

Republican officials in several states acknowledge that the Obama campaign may start with a slight advantage in early voting because Democrats have grown more accustomed to casting their ballots early. To level the playing field, the Republican secretary of state in Ohio sent absentee ballot requests to every registered voter in the state.

Tom Zawistowski, president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, a group affiliated with the Tea Party, sent a message to encourage members to consider voting early. He wrote, "I know we do not like absentee voting or early voting at all, but it is a key part of our election equation now and we need to understand how to use it to our advantage just like the other side does."

Here in Des Moines, the line slowed to a trickle after a few hours on Thursday morning, but the real burst of voting will come when absentee ballots start arriving by mail as early as Friday in voters' mailboxes. The Obama campaign is deploying hundreds of field organizers and volunteers this weekend to "chase ballots," or return envelopes to county election offices. The Republican Party here is sending a mailing to all of its voters, urging them to request an absentee ballot and vote before Election Day.

As Nancy Bobo, 60, stood with other Obama supporters, she wondered aloud where the supporters of Mr. Romney were.

"I don't see them," she said with a smile. "But we're not taking anything for granted. We still have 40 days to go. You never know; things can change on a dime."

But in the northwest corner of Iowa, more than 200 miles away in the town of Orange City, Gert Kooi, 76, was among those voting for Mr. Romney on Thursday.

"I voted today because we might not be here on Election Day, and my mind is long made up," Ms. Kooi said in an interview. She added, "We just don't care for Obama here."

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Orange City, Iowa.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/with-start-of-early-voting-election-day-becomes-election-month/


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Early voting started Thursday for residents of Waterloo, Iowa. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES) (A1)
Rick Flom voted on Thursday in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Absentee ballots have also begun landing in mailboxes in 30 other states (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVE WEAVER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A15) CHART: Early Voting in Tossup States: Many voters will cast their ballots long before November. In 2008, more than 30 percent of all votes were cast before Election Day either by mail or in person, and the percentage is expected to be higher this year. (Sources: United States Election Project at George Mason University
state voter information Web sites) (A15)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



734 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 28, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Obama Fills in Blanks of Romney's Plans, and G.O.P. Sees Falsehoods


BYLINE: By MICHAEL COOPER


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 1077 words


The Obama campaign has run advertisements charging that Mitt Romney's Medicare plan ''could raise seniors' costs up to $6,400 a year'' and that his tax proposal ''would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle-class families by up to $2,000 a year.''

In making such assertions, the Obama campaign is taking advantage of the many unknown details of Mr. Romney's policy proposals by filling in the blanks in the least flattering light, often relying on the findings of research organizations. In doing so, the campaign has leveled some charges that are more specific than the known facts warrant and others that are most likely wrong -- though Mr. Romney's decision not to provide more detailed explanations of his Medicare and tax proposals have made it difficult to provide a fuller evaluation of some of the competing assertions.

The outdated charge that future Medicare beneficiaries could face $6,400 in higher costs comes from an analysis of an old proposal by Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, that has since been revised, a point that President Obama himself acknowledged in a speech last week. And the assertion that Mr. Romney would raise taxes on the middle class -- contrary to his oft-repeated pledge not to -- is based on an independent analysis of his tax plan that found it was ''not mathematically possible'' for his plan to achieve all of its goals without raising taxes on the middle class.

Now, as both campaigns prepare for the first Obama-Romney debate next week, Republicans have been signaling that they plan to more aggressively question the accuracy of the Obama campaign's assertions. The Obama campaign has run ads distorting Mr. Romney's abortion position; Republicans and some independent groups have questioned the president's decision to count the savings the come from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward deficit reduction; and Mr. Obama recently said incorrectly that Operation Fast and Furious, a botched gun trafficking case, began during George W. Bush's administration. (A similar program was started under Mr. Bush, but Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009.)

In an interview this month with ABC News, Mr. Romney -- whose own campaign has been criticized for making misleading claims -- suggested that he would be more aggressive in questioning Mr. Obama's accuracy. ''I think the challenge that I'll have in the debate is that the president tends to, how shall I say it, to say things that aren't true,'' he said. And Karl Rove, who was Mr. Bush's political strategist and who founded a political action committee that opposes Mr. Obama, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Mr. Romney should make the case that ''Mr. Obama doesn't shoot straight because he can't defend his record.''

How both sides talk about Medicare and taxes is likely to come under increasing scrutiny.

The Obama administration's charge that beneficiaries could see their Medicare payments rise by $6,400 under Mr. Romney is based on an out-of-date analysis. Mr. Ryan's original plan called for giving future beneficiaries fixed amounts of money to buy private insurance -- and it limited the growth of those payments to the rate of inflation. Since health care costs rise faster than inflation, such a plan would leave beneficiaries to face higher costs.

Mr. Ryan then revised his plan, and Mr. Romney has further altered it. The Romney campaign's policy director, Lanhee Chen, wrote last month that while older people with higher incomes may be asked to pay more, ''all seniors will be guaranteed sufficient support because the support is actually set based on what plans will cost.''

But the campaign has not detailed how the plan would work. A question-and-answer section of the campaign's Web site puts it this way: ''How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow? Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost.''

Mr. Romney has in the past suggested limiting the growth of the subsidies. He told The Washington Examiner last December that allowing the subsidies to grow at the rate of medical inflation ''would have no particular impact on reining in the excessive cost of our entitlement program.'' So if his campaign's theory that increased competition among private plans will slow health care costs proves wrong, future beneficiaries could face higher costs. And Mr. Romney's pledge to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law would cost them more, since part of the law helps beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs. But without knowing the size of the subsidies or how fast they would grow, it is impossible to assign a dollar value to the cost, as the Obama campaign has tried to do.

The Obama campaign's television ad charging that Mr. Romney would raise taxes on the middle class was found to be accurate by several fact-checking organizations, even though it runs directly counter to Mr. Romney's pledge that he will not do so.

The ad is based on an analysis of Mr. Romney's vague proposals by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group, which found that it was impossible for his plan to achieve all of its stated goals. Mr. Romney wants to cut income tax rates by 20 percent while continuing to collect the same amount of revenue by eliminative tax breaks -- all without raising taxes on the middle class.

The center projected that the tax cuts alone would reduce revenues by $456 billion in 2015. But the center's director, Donald Marron, later wrote that he did not read the analysis as ''evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich'' but rather as ''showing that his plan can't accomplish all his stated objectives.''

Mr. Romney has declined to say which tax breaks he would reduce.

An adviser to the Romney campaign, Kevin A. Hassett, suggested this week at a panel discussion that Mr. Romney might scale back his cuts to the tax rates if he failed to eliminate enough tax breaks to make up for the lost revenue. Mr. Hassett said that Mr. Romney would not raise taxes on the middle class. The Romney campaign later posted a statement on its Web site reiterating the outline of its tax plan, including the call to cut rates by 20 percent without losing revenue.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/politics/obama-takes-advantage-of-romneys-lack-of-details.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney, who has been criticized for misleading claims of his own, said the president tends ''to say things that aren't true.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



735 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 28, 2012 Friday


Debate Challenge? What to Call Your Opponent


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 862 words



HIGHLIGHT: Will it be "Mr. President" or "the president" when Mr. Romney refers to his rival? Will Mr. Obama talk about the "governor" or "my opponent"? Or will "Mitt" and "Barack" slip out?


As Mitt Romney and President Obama huddle with their debate coaches this weekend, they will each have to make a simple - but potentially critical - decision ahead of Wednesday's face-off.

What do they call each other?

Will it be "Mr. President" or "the president" when Mr. Romney refers to his rival on the stage? Will Mr. Obama talk about the policies that "the governor" wants to pursue? Or will he talk about the impact of those policies from "my opponent"?

Or will there be less formal moments, when "Mitt" and "Barack" slip out?

Millions of people will be watching the two men in one of the very few direct interactions they have had during the 2012 campaign. Among the things being scrutinized: how much respect will each contender pay to his rival?

"There's a certain amount of decorum that we expect in our debates," said Brett O'Donnell, one of the Republican party's top debate coaches. "The reference that they use for each other is a beginning point for that decorum."

Washington is famous for its fake friendliness - think of how often senators heap praise on their "good friend, the gentleman from Ohio" just before skewering the Ohio senator's motives and killing his legislation with a parliamentary maneuver.

Presidential debates are no different. They are among the highest-stakes moments in American politics. Yet they demand smiles and handshakes at the beginning - a demonstration of respect and friendliness that is often at odds with the tough rhetoric that often follows.

There have been few occasions in modern political history of outright nastiness or scorn when it comes to how presidential candidates refer to each other during debates. Still, campaigns have often made subtle choices as they seek an advantage.

During the first debate between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain of Arizona in 2008, Mr. Obama all but ignored Mr. McCain's decades as a senator, perhaps hoping not to draw too much of a contrast to his own short tenure in the chamber.

Almost every time Mr. Obama referred to his rival during that debate, he simply used his first name.

"I don't know where John is getting his figures," Mr. Obama said at one point. Another time, he said: "John, nobody is denying that $18 billion is important." Later, he spoke directly to Mr. McCain, saying: "John, 10 days ago, you said that the fundamentals of the economy are sound."

In all, Mr. Obama used Mr. McCain's first name 25 times. By contrast, Mr. McCain referred to Mr. Obama as "Senator Obama" or "the senator" each time.

"It was a backhanded compliment," Mr. O'Donnell said, recalling Mr. Obama's use of Mr. McCain's first name. "On the outside, he was being friendly, trying to be comfortable. It was a way of being respectfully distrustful."

Three weeks later, in the third debate of the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama had apparently thought better of his choice. He called Mr. McCain "John" only once, referring to him as "Senator McCain" throughout the rest of the debate.

That same year, Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Mr. McCain's vice-presidential nominee, asked her rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., "Hey, can I call you Joe?" while shaking his hand at the debate's opening.

She went on to call him "senator" during most of the debate, but did drop the formality when responding to Mr. Biden's criticism of the previous Republican administration.

"Say it ain't so, Joe," Ms. Palin said. "There you go again pointing backwards again."

Debate coaches often suggest that candidates do whatever they can to subtly undermine their rival's experience and stature. In 2004, President George W. Bush repeatedly referred to Senator John Kerry as merely "my opponent," even when referring to Mr. Kerry's Senate votes.

Mr. Bush used the same approach four years earlier, when debating Vice President Al Gore. Sometimes he called him "the vice president," but often switched to "my opponent." Mr. Gore stayed with the formal "Governor Bush," reminding all who were watching of the limits of Mr. Bush's experience.

Mr. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, always referred to Michael Dukakis as "Governor Dukakis" in 1988. President Jimmy Carter was careful to say "Governor Reagan" during their 1980 debates. In fact, most presidential candidates seem to adopt that careful approach: be respectful by using a proper title that doesn't risk offending anyone.

The exceptions seem to come in those unscripted moments when candidates either clash angrily or interact warmly, dropping for just a brief moment the formal pretense.

Perhaps the most memorable of those moments came during a presidential primary debate in 2008. When a moderator asked Hillary Rodham Clinton why people thought Mr. Obama was more likable, she answered, "I don't think I'm that bad."

Mr. Obama dropped his guard and stopped calling her "Senator Clinton" in a moment that helped breathe new life back into Ms. Clinton's campaign against him.

"You're likable enough, Hillary," he said. "No doubt about it."



LOAD-DATE: September 29, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



736 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 28, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION


Candidates swing through Virginia again;
Pivotal state fertile ground for new themes


BYLINE: David Jackson, @djusatoday, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 2A


LENGTH: 633 words


As Mitt Romney and aides attacked President Obama over gloomy new economic statistics, Obama touted a new campaign theme Thursday: a "new economic patriotism" emphasizing the middle class.

"During campaign season, you always hear a lot about patriotism," Obama told supporters at an outdoor amphitheater near the Virginia coast. "Well, you know what, it's time for a new economic patriotism -- and economic patriotism rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong and thriving middle class."

The term is also the theme of a new Obama ad airing in battleground states, including Virginia.

Aides to Romney -- who also campaigned in this key swing state Thursday -- challenged Obama's handling of the economy, citing a new government report saying the economy grew by only 1.3% in the second quarter of this year.

"Our economy needs to be reinvigorated," Romney said in Springfield. "And the president has laid out his plan -- it's a continuation of the old plan. We can't afford four more years of the last four years."

Both campaigns are making a big target of Virginia, which went Republican in 10 straight presidential elections until 2008, when Obama became the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win the commonwealth.

As he has throughout his re-election campaign, Obama told about 7,000 backers in Virginia Beach that he inherited an economy that had collapsed before he took office. He said it will "take a few more years" to recover from the economic meltdown, but that his policies -- including the stimulus law, the health care law and new financial regulations -- are having a positive effect.

"We're not where we need to be, not yet," Obama said. "We've got a lot more folks who have to get back to work. We've got a lot more work to do, to make the middle-class secure again. But the question is, whose plan is better for you?"

The president said that Romney's plans -- more tax cuts for the wealthy, fewer regulations on business -- will return the economy to the conditions that preceded the 2008 meltdown. "It didn't work then, and it won't work now," Obama said of Romney's "top-down economics."

Meanwhile, Romney slammed Obama's record on veterans issues and the military during a speech at an American Legion post in Springfield and pledged to make jobs for vets a top priority.

The legion speech is the first of two military-themed events Romney has scheduled this week; the second will be today in Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Wayne, Pa.

Romney took aim at scheduled spending cuts that could hit Virginia's military and defense contractor community if implemented, saying the policy was not only "strange" but dangerous, given the state of foreign affairs. "When the secretary of Defense said it would be devastating, he wasn't referring merely to the loss of jobs in Virginia; he was thinking about our national security priorities and needs," Romney said. "The world is not a safe place."

Romney has led Obama among veterans as well as voters over the age of 65, which appeared to make up most of Thursday's crowd at the American Legion.

Obama also made an appeal to veterans in this military-oriented state -- and took a swipe at Romney's statement that the president starts out with 47% of the vote because of people who either receive government benefits or pay no taxes. Many military voters are retirees who receive Social Security and don't necessarily pay income tax.

"I don't think we can get very far with leaders who write off half the nation as a bunch of victims who never take responsibility for their own lives," Obama said.

Saying "I don't meet a lot of victims," Obama cited a list that included "a whole bunch of veterans (who) served this country with bravery and distinction."

Contributing: Jackie Kucinich in Springfield, Va.


LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



737 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 28, 2012 Friday 10:43 PM EST


Downballot Dems: Ryan worse than Romney;
Democrats in a total of seven non-presidential races this year have run ads attacking Ryan.


BYLINE: Felicia Sonmez


LENGTH: 297 words


That Democrats are airing TV ads tying downballot Republican candidates to the GOP presidential ticket is nothing new.

That those ads more often feature GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan than presidential nominee Mitt Romney is somewhat unexpected.Democrats in a total of seven non-presidential races this year have run ads attacking Ryan, according to Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks TV ads. Several of those are ads run by the party's House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

By contrast, Kantar/CMAG has tracked just five Democratic ads tying downballot candidates to Romney. There have been just two instances thus far of pro-Ryan ads aired by downballot GOP candidates, including one launched this week by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.).

The data are the latest sign that Romney's choice to tap Ryan as his running mate has been one laden with risk as well as reward. New Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation polling released this week indicates that a majority of voters in the top three swing states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia oppose an overhaul of Medicare similar to the one Ryan has proposed.

While Ryan has taken a new turn in the spotlight of some Democratic campaign ads, both he and Romney are still far from becoming the type of target that Obama has become in downballot ads on the GOP side, according to Kantar/CMAG.

Since April 10, the group has found more than 150,000 occurrences of downballot ads attacking Obama compared with about 1,700 slamming Ryan and nearly 1,300 taking aim at Romney.

One new example of an ad tying a statewide candidate to Obama came this week, when Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) launched a new TV spot calling his Democratic opponent, former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona, "Barack Obama's rubber stamp."


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



738 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 28, 2012 Friday 10:30 PM EST


NRSC chairman: 'no plans' to put money into Missouri Senate race;
The chairman of Senate Republicans' campaign arm says Missouri does not look like a winnable race.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 774 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

National Democrats to hit the airwaves in Maine Senate race

Claire McCaskill's unlikely supporter: Joe Ricketts

The almost-competitiveness of Arizona and Pennsylvania

What if the presidential debates don't matter?

Campaign ads take a turn for the nasty

Race becomes an issue in North Carolina gubernatorial campaign

Gov. John Kasich makes a comeback in Ohio

The devastatingly bad candidacy of Todd Akin - and how it could cost Republicans the Senate

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Mitt Romney told reporters Friday that he believes voters will pay close attention to the upcoming debates and make a decision about what is in the best interest of their country and family. "The American people will listen carefully to the conversation that's held over three debates and the fourth, with the vice presidential debate," Romney said. "They'll decide who can help their family, who will be able to get our economy going in the way it could be going and they'll make a decision based on what they believe is in the best interest of the country and their own family. And I expect to be able to describe that in a way people will understand - and if they do, I'll get elected."

* Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said on MSNBC Friday morning that Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) "kind of makes [Rep.] Michele Bachmann look like a hippie."

* Akin consultant Kellyanne Conway compared the barrage of GOP attacks against the congressman to the situation cult leader David Koresh faced in Waco in 1993: "The first day or two where it was like the Waco with the David Koresh situation where they're trying to smoke him out with the SWAT teams and the helicopters and the bad Nancy Sinatra records. Then here comes day two and you realize the guy's not coming out of the bunker. Listen, Todd has shown his principle to the voters," she said. Meanwhile, former senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), who once called for Akin to end his bid, now backs him. 

* National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Tex.) said the NRSC has "no plans" to spend money on the Missouri Senate race. "I just think that this is not a winnable race," Cornyn said. "We have to make tough calculations based on limited resources and where to allocate it, where it will have the best likelihood of electing a Republican senator." After previously saying it would not spend any money for Akin, the committee re-opened the door to doing so on Wednesday.

* Romney released a new Spanish-language TV ad featuring Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno (R) saying, "These last few years have been very hard for our families. With Mitt Romney, things will get better."

* Former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) released an internal poll showing her running about even with Rep. Martin Heinrich (D). Wilson is at 42 percent in the Public Opinion Strategies poll, while Heinrich is at 43 percent. Independent candidate Jon Barrie is at 9 percent in the poll, which is the same level of support he received in Heinrich's internal poll released earlier on Friday. Third party candidates usually poll better than they perform. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Former President Bill Clinton is headed to New Hampshire next Wednesday to campaign for President Obama. 

* The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is up with a new contrast ad in New York's 19th District that says Rep. Chris Gibson (R) "put his party first when he voted to end the Medicare guarantee" while Julian Schreibman "says put the middle class first." Meanwhile, Crossroads GPS is spending $461,000 on an ad buy that hits Schreibman for supporting the federal health care law.  

* A Democratic poll of the Montana Senate race conducted for the League Of Conservation Voters shows Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Rep. Dennis Rehberg running about even. The Democrat is at 44 percent and the Republican is at 42 percent in the Global Strategy Group survey. 

* A Republican poll conducted for YG Action Fund shows GOP nominee Richard Tisei holding a slight lead over Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.). Tisei leads Tierney 45 percent to 37 percent in the North Star Opinion Research poll. YG Action Fund is a super PAC run by former aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.).

THE FIX MIX:

All 50 states. 

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



739 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 28, 2012 Friday 10:15 PM EST


Race becomes an issue in North Carolina gubernatorial campaign;
A pair of videos has sparked a back-and-forth over race during the last week.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1038 words


Race has sprung up in as in issue in North Carolina governor's race during the last couple of weeks, with a pair of ads sparking a dust-up in the campaign for retiring Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue's seat.

On Thursday, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton's (D) campaign released on online video featuring African Americans saying that Republican nominee Pat McCrory just doesn't understand the issues that are important to them.

These accusations are about as direct as any you will see in a campaign video. They come on the heels of a TV ad the McCrory campaign launched a week ago, featuring a former Democratic sheriff who chalked up his 2010 primary loss to the black community voting along racial lines."Pat McCrory just doesn't understand the African-American experience in North Carolina," says one man at the beginning of the spot. "Pat McCrory doesn't need to be governor. He needs a history lesson," concludes another man at the end of the 60-second video.

In McCrory's ad, former Wilson County sheriff Wayne Gay says: "Once a sheriff, always a sheriff. Once a Democrat, always a Democrat. Never voted any other way. 'Till now. North Carolina's a mess. It's not getting better. Our only hope is Pat McCrory."

A black candidate defeated Gay, who is white, by a wide margin in the 2010 Democratic primary, and the Charlotte Observer reports that Gay told a TV reporter "the black community realized they had an opportunity to elect a black sheriff, and I think they took advantage of it. Ninety-eight percent of them voted based on race."

McCrory's ad prompted a harsh response from state Sen. Floyd McKissick (D), the chairman of the state legislative black caucus. "This ad, with this script, featuring this man was no accident. He triggers a racial cue that has no place in this campaign," McKissick wrote in a letter to McCrory.

He added: "Running an ad in which Gay says, 'Our only hope is Pat McCrory' begs the question of who is 'our'?

It didn't end there. As the Charlotte Observer notes in a roundup of the entire episode, Dalton's campaign issued a statement from Melvin "Skip" Alston, the former president of the state NAACP, who said: "Race-baiting disguised as a political vision cannot be tolerated." Both Alston and McKissick are Dalton supporters.

McCrory's campaign has defended its spot and describes the Dalton video as a desperation play.

"This video they released is absolutely way over the top and desperate," McCrory spokesman Brian Nick told The Fix.

The producer of McCrory's ads is Fred Davis, a well-known campaign ad maker who was made some head-turning spots over the years, including Christine O'Donnell's "I'm Not a Witch" spot in 2010 and Carly Fiorina's "Demon Sheep" ad that same year. Davis came under criticism earlier this year when a New York Times report linked him to a plan to produce ads tying President Obama to his controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose discussion of race made him the subject of scrutiny during the 2008 campaign.

The plan the Times reported on this year did not ultimately go though. Dalton's campaign has made a point of noting Davis's ties to the McCrory campaign.

Polling shows that McCrory holds a comfortable lead over Dalton, and is running ahead of Mitt Romney in the state. The former Charlotte mayor has also outpaced Dalton when it comes to fundraising. The last week hasn't changed North Carolina's status as the GOP's best pickup opportunity this cycle, but it has become more heated. 

And now, without further ado, to the Line!

(A reminder that the races below are ordered according to likelihood that they will change parties, with No. 1 being the most likely.)

5. West Virginia (Democratic-controlled): Republicans are repeating an attack pattern they used against Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) in 2011 and now-Sen. Joe Manchin (D) in 2010: Link the Democrat to Obama. Last year, the Republican Governors Association waited until the end of the campaign before blanketing the airwaves with ads tying Tomblin to the president, who is very unpopular in the state. This time around, Republican nominee Bill Maloney and the RGA have already begun with the familiar theme. Democrats know how to weather this attack. That's an important card in their deck. (Previous ranking: 5)

4. Washington (D): After most polls early in the race showed state Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) leading former congressman Jay Inslee (D), every poll over the last two months has shown Inslee slightly ahead. The most recent is an Elway Poll released last week that showed Inslee at 44 percent and McKenna at 41 percent. We still consider this a toss-up, but while it started the cycle as a great GOP pickup opportunity, it now appears slightly less so. (Previous ranking: 4).

3. New Hampshire (D): Both an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll and a Democratic survey conducted for the state party by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner show attorney Ovide Lamontagne (R) and former state Senate majority leader Maggie Hassan running about even. But given the improvement in the macroscopic climate for Democrats during the past month and Obama's lead in the state, we're moving this race down to No. 3. Hassan also has the backing of Bill Clinton, whose stock has never been higher. Clinton will be in New Hampshire for Obama on Wednesday. No word yet on whether he' ll stump with Hassan. (Previous ranking: 2)

 2. Montana (D): We finally got our first non-automated poll in this race, but it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. A Mason-Dixon poll released last week showed state Attorney General Steve Bullock (D) at 44 percent and former congressman Rick Hill (R) at 43 percent. We're moving this race up to No. 2 because of the atmospherics in a red state, but Bullock continues to have a better image than Hill, which makes this effectively a tie ballgame. (Previous ranking: 3)

1. North Carolina (D): McCrory leads Dalton 52 percent to 39 percent in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, reinforcing his control over this race, which is still the best Republican pickup opportunity this cycle. McCrory was outspent by Perdue in 2008, but kept the race within 4 points. This cycle, an early start has helped him dwarf Dalton's fundraising. (Previous ranking: 1)


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



740 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 28, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Not so much 'undecided' as 'uninterested'


BYLINE: Ezra Klein


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 938 words


"It seems that more than 96 percent of voters have already made up their minds about this election," the ad begins.

"Well, I guess some of us are just a little harder to please," it continues. "We're not impressed by political spin and 30-second sound bites. Before you get our vote, you're going to have to answer some questions. Questions like, 'When is the election?' 'How soon do we have to decide?' 'What are the names of the two people running?' "

As you might have guessed, the ad is a spoof. We're in that blissful few months before an election in which NBC's "Saturday Night Live" becomes really, really good.

Even though the ad is an exaggeration, it's not an outright lie. This election will probably be decided by a tiny fraction of the electorate in eight or nine states. The undecided voters in those states are popularly portrayed as people who just can't make up their minds. But that's not quite right. They aren't so much undecided as uninterested and, frankly, uninformed. In political science parlance - and "SNL" ads - they are "low information" voters.

It's worth stopping here to clarify something: "Uninformed" does not mean "dumb." We're all uninformed about certain topics. You wouldn't believe how little I know about, say, baseball. I'm vaguely aware that it happens, and that it culminates in a World Series, but I can't tell you who won last year, or who's in contention this year. Baseball just isn't something to which I pay attention.

Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, says that uninformed voters have roughly the same relationship to politics that I have to baseball.

"They are lower on political information, for sure. That's a function of being not that interested and not paying attention," she said. "It's not that they can't comprehend the information, or that they're at a balancing point and can't decide. They're just not dialed in. They're not getting all the information you or I are getting."

Vavreck asked thousands of voters - both decided and undecided - a battery of basic, multiple-choice questions about who's who in politics. The questions were designed to be easy. You didn't have to know that John Boehner is speaker of the House. You just had to know he is a congressman rather than a judge or the vice president.

According to Vavreck's polling, only 35 percent of undecided voters could identify Boehner's job as "congressman." Only 69 percent could say that Joe Biden is the vice president rather than, say, a representative. Only 17 percent can identify Chief Justice John Roberts as a judge.

Decided voters have an easier time rattling off the job titles of Boehner and Biden, as well as those of Harry Reid, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. (Interestingly, they struggle more than undecideds to identify Roberts.)

That's likely because decided voters are paying more attention to the election. About 43 percent of decided voters say they're following the presidential election "very closely." Only 12 percent of undecided voters say the same.

Recognizing that undecided voters are mostly uninterested voters helps to clarify the trajectory of the presidential campaign. In their book "The Timeline of Presidential Elections," Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien show that voter preferences tend to be very stable in the fall but that campaign observers - the authors analyze people betting money in online political prediction markets - tend to assume those preferences are far more volatile.

The misjudgment makes sense as an act of psychological projection. To people personally invested in politics, the homestretch of the campaign appears to be loaded with the kind of political information that could change voter opinions. There are debates, a flood of ads, inevitable gaffes, the crush of election news - maybe even an October surprise or two.

But undecided voters are precisely those least likely to tune in to the debates, which helps explain why debates typically have little effect on elections. They're the least likely to care about a gaffe - or even to know when one has occurred. They're more likely to throw out political mail and tune out political ads. If they live in a swing state, they've already been buffeted by - and proved immune to - months of commercials and phone messages.

Vavreck has been tracking a group of 44,000 voters since December 2011. When she started, 94 percent were already leaning toward a candidate. Of the 6 percent who were truly undecided, 33 percent now say they're going with Mitt Romney and 37 percent with President Obama. The ranks of the original undecided voters were partially replenished by voters who expressed a preference in 2011 but have since grown uncertain. Of the new undecideds, slightly more were Romney supporters in 2011 than were Obama supporters, but the total numbers are small.

There's little reason to think that undecided voters in this campaign will break sharply toward one candidate. The votes of the undecideds seem to be roughly evenly split, and if any big news happens between now and the election, they will probably be the last to know about it and the least interested in following up on it. If Obama is going to turn this into a rout, or if Romney is to salvage a win, it will probably require changing minds that are already made up, or increasing (or suppressing) turnout among base voters.

In other words, don't expect the votes of the mythical undecideds to actually be decisive. It's likely to be the decided who will, well, decide.

kleine@washpost.com

Twitter: @ezraklein

For previous columns by Ezra Klein, see postbusiness.com.


LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



741 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 28, 2012 Friday 2:32 PM EST


Ad watch: Puerto Rico's governor touts Romney;
Romney is expanding his Hispanic surrogate roster.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 126 words


Mitt Romney, Nuestra Comunidad

What it says:  "Yo sé que nuestra comunidad tomará la decisión correcta. Ya no se trata de 'sí se puede', se trata de 'cómo se puede'." ("I know that our community will make the right decision. It isn't about 'yes we can', it's about 'how we can.")

What it means: Romney is expanding his Hispanic surrogate roster to include Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno, popular within the party though not nearly as nationally famous as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Puerto Ricans make up 28 percent of Florida's Hispanic eligible voters - second only to Cubans. voters in Florida. While Obama won these voters in 2008, its a swing bloc. 

Who will see it: Florida, obviously.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



742 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 28, 2012 Friday 3:40 AM EST


5 questions asked (and answered) on President Obama's "kitchen table" ad;
President Obama's two-minute TV ad -- and why it matters.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


LENGTH: 576 words


This morning President Obama's campaign launched an unorthodox two-minute ad in virtually every swing state left on the electoral map - New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado - a gambit that offers a telling window into the campaign's strategy with the first debate just six days off and election day now only 40 days away.

So, what does the ad tell us exactly? We break that down below.  But first, let's watch it.

And now for what it means/why they did it.

* Why now?: As NBC's invaluable "First Read" notes this morning, early voting - either absentee or in-person - has already begun in 30 states including the battlegrounds of Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Virginia.  Given the massive growth in early vote across the country, the Obama team (rightly) believes that they need to reach voters with their last, best message starting now. No reason to leave this ad for the final week of the campaign. Our guess? They cut it down to a 30-second spot and run it in swing states in the last few days before Nov. 6.

* Why 2 minutes?: In a world of 30-second ads, a two-minute campaign commercial is an eternity. And, that's kind of the point.  The Obama team knows that if you live in a swing state you have been absolutely snowed under with TV ads and that it's next to impossible to differentiate one from the other. A two-minute ad, almost by definition, looks different than all of the other ads deluging the swing state airwaves - and standing out (or at least getting people not to fast forward through the ad) is the name of the game at this point.

* Why Obama?: There's never been much doubt in the Obama world that the president is the best messenger to deliver the closing case for his candidacy. (You could make an argument that Bill Clinton is at least as good a closer for Obama but, well, we already did that.)  Obama's gifts as a communicator - whether or not you agree with him on the issues - are significant and putting him directly to the camera is a sign of the confidence the campaign has in his ability to sell a winning message in the final days of the race.

* What's the message?: It's a two-minute long ad so there's plenty to choose from - but one line jumped out to us. "When I took office we were losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month and were mired in Iraq," says Obama early on in the ad.  "Today I believe that as a nation we are moving forward again. But we have much more to do to get folks back to work and make the middle class secure again." That's the Obama campaign message in three sentences. Things were bad - domestically and internationally - when I took over.  I did what I could to make them (slightly) better.  But I know we're not there yet.  If he can get undecided voters to buy that basic construct, he will win. 

* Why the specifics?: Most of the ad is dedicated to going through Obama's four-point plan  to move the country forward - including creating one million new manufacturing jobs, cutting oil imports in half and adding 100,000 new math and science teachers.  The point is to drive a contrast between Obama's specific, positive plans about the next right steps for the country and what the president's campaign believes is a Romney campaign that is afraid to offer any detailed explanation of what he would do in office. (Republicans will note that while Obama gets specific in his ad, he doesn't explain the "how" of accomplishing the various things he proposes.)


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



743 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 28, 2012 Friday 1:18 AM EST


Why Mitt Romney isn't going to get blown out;
Mitt Romney is down. But he's almost certainly not out.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1133 words


It's easy amid a slew of swing state and national polling that shows President Obama opening up a high single-digit lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney to conclude that we could be witnessing an electoral blowout in the making.

But, there's plenty of reasons - historical and financial, mainly - to believe the most likely outcome is a narrowing of the race, rather than a second Obama blowout.

Let's start with 2008, which was one of the best Democratic years in modern presidential history. Not only did then-candidate Obama galvanize a national movement behind his campaign, he also benefited from the fact that opponent Sen. John McCain could never get out from under George W. Bush's shadow or convince the American public that he was well-versed on the economy.  

Add to those political environmental factors the fact that Obama raised and spent upwards of $750 million while McCain accepted public financing that limited his spending to $84 million - meaning that Democrats outspent Republicans by as much as 10-1 in some swing states - and it's clear that Obama hit something close to a Democratic high-water mark in 2008.

So what was that high-water mark? Did Obama win 60 percent of the popular vote? Or 500 electoral votes? Nope.

Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote, compared with 45.6 percent for McCain. Obama took 365 electoral votes to 173 for McCain.

Obama's 52.9 percent of the popular vote was only the second time since 1964 that a Democratic presidential candidate had won 50 percent or more of the national popular vote. (Jimmy Carter got exactly 50 percent in 1976.)  In that same time period, Republican nominees broke the 50 percent popular vote barrier five times (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2004).

The popular vote story is similar in the three swingiest states of the last two elections: Ohio, Virginia and Florida. Obama won all three of them in 2008 but only in Virginia - where his margin was 6.3 percent - did he score what could be called a decisive victory.  (Obama won Florida by two and a half points and Ohio by four points.) In none of that trio of states did Obama beat McCain by more than 250,000 votes - a remarkable finding given that 3.6 million votes were cast in Virginia, 5.2 million were cast in Ohio and 8 million were cast in Florida.

No one - not even the most loyal Obama allies - would argue that the political environment in 40 days will be anywhere close to as favorable as it was in November 2008.

The continued struggles of the economy, as well as Obama's middling job approval numbers, virtually ensure that the sort of heavily tilted national landscape that he enjoyed four years ago will not be replicated on Nov. 6.

And the spending edge that Obama had over McCain not only won't be replicated but should be reversed. Romney and the Republican party have $40 million more to spend than Obama and the Democratic party in the final weeks of the campaign - a not-insignificant sum split over just six weeks. And that doesn't include outside groups, where Republicans continue to dominate.

Given those two factors, it's hard to imagine that Obama would equal or even exceed the vote totals he ran up both in swing states and nationally in 2008. And if Obama comes up even slightly short of his margins four years ago, then Romney could well have a shot at winning the handful of swing states he needs to get to 270 electoral votes.

All of that doesn't mean, of course, that Obama isn't ahead right now. He is.  But it does mean that it is more likely that his margin narrows - both in swing states and nationally - than that it expands between now and Election Day. The country remains deeply divided along partisan lines, and that seems unlikely to change in any meaningful way before voters vote.

Romney ad keeps up coal offensive: Romney's campaign keeps going after Obama hard on coal, launching a new ad featuring Obama in his own words.

The ad uses a video clip of Obama saying, "If somebody wants to build a coal fire plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them."

The words were uttered in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008 when Obama presented his case for a cap and trade energy bill. Conservatives view them as a potential game-changer in the presidential race, arguing that they betray Obama's anti-coal agenda.

Coal is a big issue in southeastern Ohio, a state that is slipping away from Romney but that Obama badly needs to win.

Fixbits:

A Republican aide tells The Fix that the Republican National Committee is going up with at least $4 million worth of ads in three states: Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Romney plays up the universal coverage portion of his health care law, and shortly thereafter attacks Obamacare.

Obama is reportedly toying with the idea of going after Arizona. We'll believe it when we see it.

Romney campaigns with the "Dirty Jobs" guy and Jack Nicklaus.

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation is asking for an apology from Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) after his staffers were caught doing "war whoops" and the "tomahawk chop" in reference to challenger Elizabeth Warren's (D) Native American controversy.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) goes to bat for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) says he will vote for Obama, but leaves open the idea of voting for a Republican to lead the Senate. Meanwhile, national Democrats launch a new ad against Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R) in Indiana.

In the Connecticut Senate race, Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is up with an ad contrasting his economic plan with Linda McMahon's (R).

Absentee and overseas military voters in Connecticut will receive blank ballots as a court case remains undecided. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is endorsing a Republican - provided that Republican wants it. Cuomo says he will back pro-gay marriage state senator Roy McDonald, who lost his primary this week but could still run on the Independence Party line.

Despite some problems, Staten Island Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) leads by 10 points in a new Siena poll, over Democrat Mark Murphy and the Green Party's Hank Burdel.

Meanwhile upstate, a Democratic poll shows former congressman Dan Maffei (D) leading freshman Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.) by eight points.

Must-reads:

 "Obama leading Romney by 9 in Fla? No way." - Adam C. Smith, Tampa Bay Times

 "Obama tops Romney in new poll of small business owners" - Joe Davidson, Washington Post

"'Super PACs' Finally a Draw for Democrats" - Nicholas Confessore, New York Times

"Mitt Romney looking to make up ground in Ohio" - Dan Balz, Washington Post

"Obama, Romney differ on U.S. exceptionalism" - Scott Wilson, Washington Post

"Without Ryan Medicare ax, GOP budget still in red" - David Rogers, Politico


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



744 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 28, 2012 Friday 12:04 AM EST


Romney adviser raises expectations for Obama in first debate;
A top adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign argues in a memorandum Thursday that President Obama enjoys a "significant advantage" going into the debates.


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


LENGTH: 634 words


Mitt Romney's campaign is trying to raise expectations for President Obama heading into the first of three presidential debates next week, with a top adviser to the Republican nominee arguing in a memorandum Thursday that Obama enjoys a "significant advantage" going into the debates. Beth Myers, a senior adviser to Romney, wrote in the memo that Obama has "natural gifts and extensive seasoning under the bright lights of the debate stage," while noting that next Wednesday's showdown in Denver will be Romney's first ever one-on-one presidential debate. She also predicted that Obama would try to turn the debate into a "90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent." Continue reading to see Myers' full memo.

MEMORANDUMFrom:              Beth Myers, Senior AdviserTo:                  Interested PartiesDate:               September 27, 2012Re:                  2012 Presidential Debates

In a matter of days, Governor Romney and President Obama will meet on the presidential debate stage. President Obama is a universally-acclaimed public speaker and has substantial debate experience under his belt. However, the record he's compiled over the last four years - higher unemployment, lower incomes, rising energy costs, and a national debt spiraling out of control - means this will be a close election right up to November 6th.

Between now and then, President Obama and Governor Romney will debate three times. While Governor Romney has the issues and the facts on his side, President Obama enters these contests with a significant advantage on a number of fronts.

Voters already believe - by a 25-point margin - that President Obama is likely to do a better job in these debates. Given President Obama's natural gifts and extensive seasoning under the bright lights of the debate stage, this is unsurprising. President Obama is a uniquely gifted speaker, and is widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history. This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first.

Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double-digit margins, and their polling showed he won one debate by an astounding 33-point margin. In the 2008 primary, he faced Hillary Clinton, another formidable opponent - debating her one-on-one numerous times and coming out ahead. The takeaway? Not only has President Obama gained valuable experience in these debates, he also won them comfortably.

But what must President Obama overcome? His record. Based on the campaign he's run so far, it's clear that President Obama will use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney. Since he won't - and can't - talk about his record, he'll talk about Mitt Romney. We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent. If President Obama is as negative as we expect, he will have missed an opportunity to let the American people know his vision for the next four years and the policies he'd pursue. That's not an opportunity Mitt Romney will pass up. He will talk about the big choice in this election - the choice between President Obama's government-centric vision and Mitt Romney's vision for an opportunity society with more jobs, higher take-home pay, a better-educated workforce, and millions of Americans lifted out of poverty into the middle class.

This election will not be decided by the debates, however. It will be decided by the American people. Regardless of who comes out on top in these debates, they know we can't afford another four years like the last four years. And they will ultimately choose a better future by electing Mitt Romney to be our next president.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



745 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 28, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


Not so much 'undecided' as 'uninterested'


BYLINE: Ezra Klein


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 938 words


"It seems that more than 96 percent of voters have already made up their minds about this election," the ad begins.

"Well, I guess some of us are just a little harder to please," it continues. "We're not impressed by political spin and 30-second sound bites. Before you get our vote, you're going to have to answer some questions. Questions like, 'When is the election?' 'How soon do we have to decide?' 'What are the names of the two people running?' "

As you might have guessed, the ad is a spoof. We're in that blissful few months before an election in which NBC's "Saturday Night Live" becomes really, really good.

Even though the ad is an exaggeration, it's not an outright lie. This election will probably be decided by a tiny fraction of the electorate in eight or nine states. The undecided voters in those states are popularly portrayed as people who just can't make up their minds. But that's not quite right. They aren't so much undecided as uninterested and, frankly, uninformed. In political science parlance - and "SNL" ads - they are "low information" voters.

It's worth stopping here to clarify something: "Uninformed" does not mean "dumb." We're all uninformed about certain topics. You wouldn't believe how little I know about, say, baseball. I'm vaguely aware that it happens, and that it culminates in a World Series, but I can't tell you who won last year, or who's in contention this year. Baseball just isn't something to which I pay attention.

Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, says that uninformed voters have roughly the same relationship to politics that I have to baseball.

"They are lower on political information, for sure. That's a function of being not that interested and not paying attention," she said. "It's not that they can't comprehend the information, or that they're at a balancing point and can't decide. They're just not dialed in. They're not getting all the information you or I are getting."

Vavreck asked thousands of voters - both decided and undecided - a battery of basic, multiple-choice questions about who's who in politics. The questions were designed to be easy. You didn't have to know that John Boehner is speaker of the House. You just had to know he is a congressman rather than a judge or the vice president.

According to Vavreck's polling, only 35 percent of undecided voters could identify Boehner's job as "congressman." Only 69 percent could say that Joe Biden is the vice president rather than, say, a representative. Only 17 percent can identify Chief Justice John Roberts as a judge.

Decided voters have an easier time rattling off the job titles of Boehner and Biden, as well as those of Harry Reid, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. (Interestingly, they struggle more than undecideds to identify Roberts.)

That's likely because decided voters are paying more attention to the election. About 43 percent of decided voters say they're following the presidential election "very closely." Only 12 percent of undecided voters say the same.

Recognizing that undecided voters are mostly uninterested voters helps to clarify the trajectory of the presidential campaign. In their book "The Timeline of Presidential Elections," Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien show that voter preferences tend to be very stable in the fall but that campaign observers - the authors analyze people betting money in online political prediction markets - tend to assume those preferences are far more volatile.

The misjudgment makes sense as an act of psychological projection. To people personally invested in politics, the homestretch of the campaign appears to be loaded with the kind of political information that could change voter opinions. There are debates, a flood of ads, inevitable gaffes, the crush of election news - maybe even an October surprise or two.

But undecided voters are precisely those least likely to tune in to the debates, which helps explain why debates typically have little effect on elections. They're the least likely to care about a gaffe - or even to know when one has occurred. They're more likely to throw out political mail and tune out political ads. If they live in a swing state, they've already been buffeted by - and proved immune to - months of commercials and phone messages.

Vavreck has been tracking a group of 44,000 voters since December 2011. When she started, 94 percent were already leaning toward a candidate. Of the 6 percent who were truly undecided, 33 percent now say they're going with Mitt Romney and 37 percent with President Obama. The ranks of the original undecided voters were partially replenished by voters who expressed a preference in 2011 but have since grown uncertain. Of the new undecideds, slightly more were Romney supporters in 2011 than were Obama supporters, but the total numbers are small.

There's little reason to think that undecided voters in this campaign will break sharply toward one candidate. The votes of the undecideds seem to be roughly evenly split, and if any big news happens between now and the election, they will probably be the last to know about it and the least interested in following up on it. If Obama is going to turn this into a rout, or if Romney is to salvage a win, it will probably require changing minds that are already made up, or increasing (or suppressing) turnout among base voters.

In other words, don't expect the votes of the mythical undecideds to actually be decisive. It's likely to be the decided who will, well, decide.

kleine@washpost.com

Twitter: @ezraklein

For previous columns by Ezra Klein, see postbusiness.com.


LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



746 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


5 Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now


BYLINE: By MICHAEL DORAN and MAX BOOT.

Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; Pg. 29


LENGTH: 816 words


WHETHER you agree or disagree with President Obama, there is no doubt that he has formulated a coherent approach to the use of American power. The Obama Doctrine involves getting into a conflict zone and getting out fast without ground wars or extended military occupations. This approach proved its effectiveness in Libya last year.

But the president is not applying his own doctrine where it would benefit the United States the most -- in Syria. One can certainly sympathize with his predicament. Syria is a mess, and it is tempting to stay out, especially in an election year. Yet inaction carries its own risks. There are five reasons to bring down President Bashar al-Assad sooner rather than later.

First, American intervention would diminish Iran's influence in the Arab world. Iran has showered aid on Syria and even sent advisers from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to assist Mr. Assad. Iran knows that if his regime fell, it would lose its most important base in the Arab world and a supply line to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Second, a more muscular American policy could keep the conflict from spreading. Syria's civil war has already exacerbated sectarian strife in Lebanon and Iraq -- and the Turkish government has accused Mr. Assad of supporting Kurdish militants in order to inflame tensions between the Kurds and Turkey.

Third, by training and equipping reliable partners within Syria's internal opposition, America could create a bulwark against extremist groups like Al Qaeda, which are present and are seeking safe havens in ungoverned corners of Syria.

Fourth, American leadership on Syria could improve relations with key allies like Turkey and Qatar. Both the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Qatari counterpart have criticized the United States for offering only nonlethal support to the rebellion. Both favor establishing a no-fly zone and ''safe zones'' for civilians in Syrian territory.

Finally, American action could end a terrible human-rights disaster within Syria and stop the exodus of refugees, which is creating a burden on neighboring states. Mr. Obama pledged earlier this year to strengthen the government's ability ''to foresee, prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.'' Now he has an opportunity to do so. And by putting allies in the lead, Mr. Obama could act without sliding down the slippery slope toward a ground war.

Our closest friends in the region -- including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Israel -- would like to see Mr. Assad toppled as soon as possible. France and Britain could also be counted on to help, as they did in Libya. Yet none of them will move until America does.

We cannot wait for the United Nations to act; that is highly unlikely. Nor can we expect the Free Syrian Army to oust Mr. Assad on its own; it is not a cohesive organization. Instead, America must identify those elements on the ground that are the most effective, easily supplied and amenable to help.

The focus should be on Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and commercial hub. The F.S.A. already controls much of the territory between the city and the Turkish border, only 40 miles away. With American support, Turkish troops could easily establish a corridor for humanitarian aid and military supplies. Defeating the government's forces in Aleppo would deal a serious blow to Mr. Assad and send a powerful signal to fence-sitters that the regime was dying.

Damascus, the capital, should be the second target. But unlike Aleppo, it can't be easily reached from a Turkish base. It could, however, be supplied from Dara'a, which is 70 miles from Damascus and less than five from the Jordanian border. It has been at the forefront of opposition to Mr. Assad. Working with Jordan, the United States could create a second corridor to Dara'a, which could serve as the southern base for the insurgency. On Wednesday, by bombing a military complex, the rebels demonstrated their ability to strike in the heart of Damascus -- though they have not yet been able to do so on a sustained basis.

To prevent Mr. Assad from staging a devastating response, the American-backed alliance would have to create a countrywide no-fly zone, which would first require taking apart Syrian air defenses. Mr. Assad has been using jets and helicopters to fight the rebels; a no-fly zone would quickly ground his entire air force. The zone could then be extended to provide the kind of close air support that NATO warplanes provided to rebel fighters in Kosovo and Libya.

While our allies could take the lead in maintaining the no-fly zone, it is necessary in Syria, as in Libya, for America to take the lead in establishing it; only our Air Force and Navy have the weaponry needed to dismantle Syria's Russian-designed air defenses with little risk.

A ''lead from behind'' approach can work in Syria. President Obama need only apply it.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/opinion/5-reasons-to-intervene-in-syria-now.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



747 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Ad Reaches Out to Working Class


BYLINE: By ASHLEY PARKER; Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from New York.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 895 words


WESTERVILLE, Ohio -- Mitt Romney stepped up his efforts to repair the damage from his ''47 percent'' comments, releasing a new television ad on Wednesday in which he speaks directly to the camera about his compassion and tries to reassure voters that he cares about the poor and middle class.

The 60-second ad, ''Too Many Americans,'' was Mr. Romney's most aggressive effort to clean up the fallout from his secretly videotaped remarks at a May fund-raiser, where he called voters who do not pay income tax ''victims'' who are dependent on the government and feel ''entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.''

But the ad came nine days after the video surfaced, a period in which Democrats have bashed Mr. Romney over the remarks, leaving him on the defensive in swing states like Ohio. The ad reflected a belief among his aides that in addition to trying to move past his ''47 percent'' comments, Mr. Romney can appeal to voters in an intimate, personal way, bonding over their economic worries. The spot, in which Mr. Romney seems to address the viewer, is an attempt, aides said, to reveal the compassion behind the policy. ''The goal is to connect with voters over their anxieties over the state of the economy, and reflect the fact that Governor Romney has a plan to fix it,'' said Kevin Madden, a senior campaign adviser.

On Wednesday, the Romney campaign reserved $3.4 million worth of advertising time in eight swing states. Nearly half of that -- more than $1.5 million -- was for Virginia. The rest was spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His total ad spending for the week is more than $10 million.

But the campaign's slow response also highlighted the gamble Mr. Romney is taking: a belief that the race will be decided in its closing weeks, and that much of the battering he has taken from President Obama and the Democrats will not have a permanent effect.

The ad comes on the heels of a concerted effort by the campaign to offer more of Mr. Romney's personal story, after Republican complaints that he has not done enough to sell or humanize himself to voters. ''President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families,'' Mr. Romney says in the ad. ''The difference is my policies will make things better for them.''

The Obama campaign continued to demand specifics in an effort to link Mr. Romney's ''47 percent'' remarks to the policies he would pursue as president. ''Mitt Romney's new ad is just more of the evasiveness that his campaign has become known for,'' said Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman. ''He pays lip service to working Americans, but doesn't name a single policy to strengthen the middle class.''

The Democratic National Committee also released a Web video that mashed the new Romney ad with his gaffes, including the 47 percent comment.

In recent weeks, Mr. Romney's campaign has also begun showing at rallies a 10-minute biographical video -- first presented at the Republican National Convention -- that offers a compelling emotional portrait of Mr. Romney's life.

The haphazard history of the biographical spot is an example of the campaign's struggles to shape Mr. Romney's image: the video was to be shown during the prime-time televised part of the convention, but was moved for Clint Eastwood's highly criticized speech. The video was then shelved, only to reappear at rallies after donors and fellow Republicans began clamoring for it.

Even Mr. Romney admitted that he had seen the entire video for the first time last week at a fund-raiser. Referring to clips of his father, George W. Romney, he said: ''I saw my dad, and it brought a tear to my eye, and more, it touched my heart.''

The question is whether Mr. Romney's newfound emphasis on his softer side is too little, too late, coming just five weeks before Election Day. His advisers claim that most voters are just tuning in.

At a Wednesday rally in Ohio, Mr. Romney spoke about the struggling voters he has met: ''My heart aches for the people I've seen.''

In an NBC News interview on Wednesday, Mr. Romney, explaining why he could relate to middle-class voters, talked about the health care law he championed as governor of Massachusetts but rarely mentions on the campaign trail. ''Don't forget -- I got everybody in my state insured,'' he said. "One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don't think there's anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.''

And at a candidate forum last week in Miami, Mr. Romney repeatedly assured voters that his campaign ''is about the 100 percent in America.''

''This is a campaign about helping people who need help,'' he said. ''And right now, the people who are poor in this country need help getting out of poverty.''

By painting himself as a compassionate conservative, Mr. Romney also seemed to be responding to his Republican critics, who have suggested that he borrow from George W. Bush's successful presidential campaign in 2000 that first used that phrase.

Mary Aggers, 65, watched the biographical video before Mr. Romney's campaign event in Bedford Heights, Ohio. ''It shows an aspect of him that the press usually doesn't bring out -- they try to make him a stiff, wealthy, cardboard figure,'' she said. ''But I like him because he's not a politician.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us/politics/romney-ad-stresses-compassion-for-poor.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney, flanked by Mike Rowe, left, host of the show ''Dirty Jobs,'' and Tim Selhorst, president of the American Spring Wire Corporation in Cleveland, on Wednesday. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



748 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Ohio Gets The Love


BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 29


LENGTH: 829 words


WESTERVILLE, Ohio

In my next life, I want to be an undecided voter in Ohio.

Honest to gosh, can you imagine the love? If the Ohio Undecided Voter had a Twitter account, it would have 10 million followers. Each campaign would have an entire operation dedicated to watching it. People in China and Bulgaria who wanted to understand what's going on in this election would just check in with #IhavenoideainSteubenville.

''October 2! Voting starts! Are you ready?'' hollered Representative Pat Tiberi at a Romney rally in central Ohio Wednesday.

''Yeah,'' the crowd returned, rather weakly. The dim response couldn't have been because of a lack of commitment. These people were standing in line at dawn -- at hours before dawn -- to get in to see Romney and his celebrity guest endorser, the golfer Jack Nicklaus.

''The Golden Bear is here because he gets it!'' cried Senator Rob Portman.

The Golden Bear was there to woo white male voters, the latest demographic that seems to be giving Romney trouble. Maybe the crowd sounded tentative because it knew the Republicans are definitely not ready. This week's Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll showed Romney running behind Obama 53 percent to 43 percent in the state.

Even among the elite brotherhood of swing states, Ohio is sort of special, particularly to Republicans. It is known, at least to the Ohio Historical Society, as the ''Mother of Presidents,'' because eight inhabitants of the White House, all Republican, were from here. Admittedly, the first one lasted only four weeks, and the last one was Warren Harding.

No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Asked if Romney could manage it, political director Rich Beeson retorted: ''If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.''

Everybody's an Ohioan. While Romney was at Westerville, President Obama was winging his way toward appearances at Kent State and Bowling Green. Paul Ryan allowed reporters to watch him go shopping in Ohio for a camouflage jacket for his 10-year-old daughter, who he claimed was practicing to go hunting this fall. ''I just need to get her some clothes,'' he explained.

People, would you consider this laying it on too thick? Even if Ryan's little girl really is dying to get out there and bag a deer, don't you think she'd want to try on her camouflage jacket before her father buys it? She might end up spending the entire fall in ill-fitting shooting gear.

President Obama has been here so much over the last four years that he deserves honorary membership in that Mother of Presidents roll call. He likes to tell his audiences that ''Governor Romney said: 'Let's let Detroit go bankrupt.' '' Then he quotes himself in the hour of crisis: ''No, one out of eight jobs in Ohio depends on the auto industry.''

Let's hope he's fibbing. I really do not want to think that in the middle of the financial meltdown, the president's first thought was what the collapse of the auto industry would mean to the big swing state. And if the pineapple industry runs into trouble, I don't want the White House's chief concern to be whether the voters of Ohio will be deprived of their upside-down cake.

Ohioans complain constantly about the burdens of swing-state status, particularly having to watch all those campaign ads. The rest of us are unsympathetic. My husband saw a presidential ad on ESPN the other day and was so excited that he taped it for me so we could watch it together and pretend we were the kind of citizens who need to be courted.

In Ohio, when you aren't seeing Romney-Obama ads, you are seeing ads for the U.S. Senate, mainly for the Republican nominee, State Treasurer Josh Mandel. Ohio is the new Rich Right's big Senate power play. Outside groups have poured a whopping $18 million into attempting to bury the incumbent, Senator Sherrod Brown.

It seems to have had no effect whatsoever: that Times poll has Brown 10 points ahead. Perhaps that's because Mandel is stiff, policy-deprived and appears to be about 12 years old. ''I thought Brown was vulnerable,'' said Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University. ''But Josh is -- I don't think he's proven to be a very good candidate.''

The Republican establishment moans about the candidates that the Tea Party's stuck them with. But, in Ohio, they got to pick, and they nominated somebody who looks like a cast member on ''Glee.''

But I digress. Meanwhile, back at the Romney rally here in Westerville, Nicklaus was telling the crowd that he chose golf as his profession because it didn't require teamwork. (''I didn't lean on somebody else in tough times.'')

Then Nicklaus introduced Mitt Romney. ''What you heard from the Golden Bear ... the words he spoke, he touched my heart,'' said the candidate. He then gave his stump speech, and the Already Committed cheered lustily.

The rest is all up to you, Undecided Voters. Although it looks as if in Ohio, the Romney camp will need some Changed My Mind recruits, too.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/opinion/collins-ohio-gets-the-love.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



749 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


'Super PACs' Are Finally Drawing Democrats In


BYLINE: By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE; Jo Craven McGinty, Derek Willis and Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1251 words


James Simons, a Long Island investor and philanthropist, has not given a cent to President Obama's re-election campaign this year.

But Mr. Simons has given at least $2 million to Priorities USA Action, the ''super PAC'' aiding Mr. Obama, and $2 million more to two allied groups supporting Democrats in Congress, making him the biggest Democratic super PAC donor in the country.

With the election just weeks away -- and millions of dollars in advertising time booked but not yet paid for -- Democratic super PACs are finally drawing the kind of wealthy donors who have already made Republican outside groups a pivotal force in the 2012 campaign.

More than 40 individuals and couples had given at least $250,000 to the leading Democratic super PACs through the beginning of September, according to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance records, and dozens more have given $100,000 or more.

But the money is not coming from the expected places. Few of the wealthiest men and women closest to Mr. Obama have donated, even as the super PAC backing Mitt Romney raises millions of dollars from his friends and former colleagues. Only a few gay donors are among the biggest givers, despite Mr. Obama's embrace of same-sex marriage last spring. Most of the wealthy liberals who financed the party's last major outside spending effort, in 2004, remain on the super PAC sidelines.

In their place, the Democratic groups are raising heavily from the party's traditional, pre-Obama sources of campaign cash: trial lawyers, unions and Hollywood. And at a time when Mr. Obama's own big donors often complain about his indifference and inattention to them, Priorities USA has had more luck outside the president's inner circle than inside it.

Mr. Simons is more typical of the emerging large Democratic donors giving to super PACs, which can accept and spend unlimited contributions in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and other court and regulatory rulings. A mathematician who founded one of the world's most successful hedge funds, Mr. Simons is politically tied most closely to Senate Democrats, and until recently he was better known for his donations to higher education, including a $150 million gift last year to the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Now he is a volunteer fund-raiser for Priorities USA and other Democratic super PACs, and he hosted an event in Charlotte, N.C., for prospective donors during the Democratic convention. In an e-mail, Mr. Simons declined to be interviewed about his role.

''The fact is that I am not seeking any publicity in this matter,'' Mr. Simons said. ''The donations can speak for themselves.''

Another emerging donor is Peter G. Angelos, a Baltimore trial lawyer and majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who has given more than $1.2 million to Priorities USA and other super PACs.

''I've never met the president,'' Mr. Angelos said. ''What's driving me is the need to re-elect the president and a Democratic Congress. Otherwise, politically, we're going nowhere.''

The super PAC donor universe could expand rapidly in the coming weeks. Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who was tapped to help the groups but was quickly sidelined by the Chicago teachers' strike, has resumed raising money for Priorities USA, a spokesman said.

And on Thursday, Bill Clinton will headline a lunch in New York to benefit Democratic groups. His audience will be members of the Democracy Alliance, a consortium of liberal donors, many of whom have been reluctant to make large contributions to super PACs this year.

The timing could be critical for Mr. Obama. Conservative super PACs and other outside groups are preparing a coordinated barrage of negative advertising for coming weeks, seeking to reverse Mr. Romney's recent slide in the polls. And Priorities has reserved significant amounts of airtime in advance, hoping to raise enough cash in the coming weeks to pay for it.

John Eddie Williams Jr., who made a fortune representing Texas in the 1990s tobacco litigation, has given close to half a million dollars. Labor unions have given more than $14 million to the Democratic groups, with the Service Employees International Union and the air traffic controllers' and the pipefitters' unions each contributing at least $1 million. The actor Morgan Freeman, the producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and Haim Saban, the Los Angeles media investor, have each given $1 million or more.

Unlike Mr. Obama's campaign, the super PAC supporting him is accepting money from lobbyists and political action committees, as are the two Congressional super PACs. Perennial Strategy Group, which has represented commercial banks and home builders, gave $600,000 to Priorities USA.

Tony and Heather Podesta, the Beltway lobbying power couple, gave $100,000 to Majority PAC, which supports Senate Democrats. The American Association for Justice, the trial lawyers' trade association, whose annual conference was attended by Democratic super PAC officials, has given more than $500,000 to the groups.

Unexpectedly big givers for Democratic super PACs are building trade unions, which have combined to donate at least $6 million. The unions lobbied Mr. Obama aggressively to approve the full Keystone pipeline project connecting Canadian oil sands production with Gulf of Mexico refineries. They failed, at least temporarily, but the administration agreed to a southern section of the pipeline, guaranteeing thousands of jobs for their members.

''In many parts of the country in Congressional and Senate races, we don't have much member density, so it makes sense to use other tools, like super PACs,'' said Richard Greer, a spokesman for the Laborers' International Union of North America.

The Democratic super PAC donor world remains far less robust than the Republican one. Total giving to their four groups reached $74 million through the beginning of September, not including donations to two affiliated tax-exempt groups that do not have to disclose their donors and fund-raising to the Federal Election Commission.

That is far less than the $300 million that two groups co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove are aiming to raise.

But officials with the groups said they believed they had reached a tipping point, persuading skeptical Democrats -- many with philosophical objections to super PACs -- to embrace the new vehicles for unlimited spending.

''I think that as the threat of Republican money really materialized, Democrats really wanted to make sure that someone had the president's back,'' said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Priorities USA. ''I think it's taken a longer time for Democrats to see the threat and impact of outside money.''

Many of those who have given said they gave only reluctantly, despite opposing the new world of unlimited giving, out of a belief that supporting Democrats was the best way to change the rules.

Two new donors are Donald and Shelley Rubin, entrepreneurs who built one of the country's largest health care companies and are better known for their philanthropic work, including founding a New York art museum. The couple gave $1 million in September.

''Donald and I believe strongly in the need for meaningful campaign finance reform and were deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United,'' Mrs. Rubin said in a statement. ''We also believe we cannot sit on the sidelines and simply let the president's opponents capitalize on the court's decision by bombarding the public with misleading and false attack ads.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us/politics/super-pacs-finally-a-draw-for-democrats.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: James Simons, above, and Peter G. Angelos are both major donors to Democratic ''super PACs,'' with Mr. Simons the biggest in the country. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
JASON REED/ REUTERS) (A18) CHART: The Big Democratic 'Super PAC' Donors: Total donations made by leading contributors to the American Bridges, Priorities USA Action, House Majority or Senate Majority PACs. (A18)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



750 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Leaving Polarization At the Door


BYLINE: By RANDY KENNEDY


SECTION: Section C; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1109 words


Robert Rauschenberg, who died four years ago after a career as big-spirited and optimistic as any in postwar art, was not considered first and foremost a politically motivated artist.

But he was deeply involved in the civil rights movement, in environmentalism and in artists' rights. And in 1987, testifying before the Senate to oppose Robert H. Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, he warned in the headline-grabbing terms of a candidate on the stump about the danger of a weakened First Amendment.

Invoking the closing of the Bauhaus only months after Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, he said cultural repression was always the first, easiest and most effective means of political control. ''It's a subtle move,'' he said, gesticulating to underscore his words, ''to destroy a society.''

Last week in a warehouse at 455 West 19th Street in Chelsea owned by the foundation he formed many years before his death, a political convention of sorts was taking shape that Rauschenberg undoubtedly would have loved to attend, miniature flag in hand. There were blue staters and red staters, the young and the old, 1 percenters and paycheck-to-paycheckers, straight and gay people, cowboys and Indians. Bella Abzug was there, not far from the Village People. President Obama was there, too, in sunglasses, exuding celebrity. And high on a wall across from him was an immense cardboard cutout saving space for Mitt Romney, who was expected to arrive at the last minute.

All of these delegates -- in painted, sculptural, photographic, print or video form -- had temporarily set aside their differences and gotten together for the show ''We the People,'' the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's debut as a New York exhibiting institution and its attempt to inject a little of contemporary art's voice into a presidential election cycle in which it has been largely absent.

The show, which opens on Wednesday and runs through Nov. 9, immediately sets out two of the foundation's aims: to focus mostly on work beyond that of its namesake (the exhibition includes a single Rauschenberg work, a 1970 screen print) and to establish itself as a kind of socially engaged cultural presence that Rauschenberg thought artists could, or should, be.

''Bob wasn't all that interested in just his own voice,'' said Christy MacLear, the foundation's director. ''He was a big believer in the overall strength of artists as a community.''

Many of the artists marshaled for the inaugural show, living and dead, are not often considered part of the same community. (A few haven't been heard from in quite a while.) And they are rarely even seen hanging in the same vicinity. But the idea of the show's organizers, the curator Alison Gingeras and the artist Jonathan Horowitz, was to populate the space's 2,700 square feet with works that would both embody and confound the way politicians and pollsters have micro-sliced the American electorate over the last several decades.

And so it is that a LeRoy Neiman serigraph of a Revolutionary War minuteman with his rifle resting heroically on his shoulder -- Mr. Neiman's martial response to Sept. 11 -- keeps company with a 1997 John Currin fantasia of two ample-bosomed women lounging in pastoral ease. And that a Norman Rockwell war bonds poster, with the message ''Save Free Speech,'' is juxtaposed with a 1946 Ben Shahn painting of a man ambiguously holding his large hand over his mouth, borrowed from the Museum of Modern Art.

''When was the last time somebody got to install a big Botero with a gilded frame on the same wall as a Cady Noland?'' Ms. Gingeras said. She looked toward a Fernando Botero family painting that telegraphed both prosperity and immigration and that hung alongside a work on rough-edged aluminum by Ms. Noland that is based on a blurred photograph of the Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst. ''We followed these threads that ended up being a lot of fun,'' Ms. Gingeras added.

If the show feels a bit like a Social Realist tent revival with undertones of ''Schoolhouse Rock!,'' a dash of '90s identity politics and enough figurative sculpture to populate a cocktail party (by George Segal, Duane Hanson, Alex Katz, Robert Heinecken, Rirkrit Tiravanija), that is what its curators had in mind, more or less.

''We discovered our shared fetish for Social Realism, for the kind of work it feels like you don't see around very much,'' said Mr. Horowitz, whose own work often takes on political issues in politically ambiguous ways. He said the first vision for the show when he and Ms. Gingeras began batting ideas around several months ago was for it to have an almost diorama quality.

In a natural-history-museum sense?

''In a cover-of-'Sgt.-Pepper's' sense,'' Ms. Gingeras said.

Bella Abzug (a large portrait by Alice Neel), Mr. Obama (a tiny portrait by Elizabeth Peyton) and the Village People (a photograph by Alvin Baltrop) would soon be joined by the show's largest work, a photo-realistic portrait of Mr. Romney, more than 8 feet tall and 14 feet wide, that the artist Richard Phillips was making specifically for the show, racing to finish it in time. Unlike a well-known portrait that Mr. Phillips made of George W. Bush soon after his first presidential election, which showed him grinning sheepishly, his face flanked by bright-pink slabs of color borrowed from a Donna Karan lingerie ad, this image of Mr. Romney will play it mostly straight, monumentalizing a photograph of the candidate from The Associated Press.

''It's not the biggest piece I've ever done -- that goes to Deepak Chopra,'' Mr. Phillips said. But he added that he thought size, in this case, was especially important for a painting of a presidential candidate in the last weeks of a divisive election.

''What realism has, and what painting has in particular, is the power of slowing down all of these images that are bombarding us to a full stop, so we can look and think,'' he said.

Politically, the exhibition is probably not the kind that would sit comfortably in, say, Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. (Nicole Eisenman's ''Dysfunctional Family,'' showing Dad hitting the bong and Mom exposing her crotch, might nix it from the outset.) But the curators said the show would be a failure -- and most likely a disappointment in Rauschenberg's eyes as well -- if it were read as a sanctimonious affirmation of blue-state, art-world liberalism.

''There are a lot of tentacles here, running between and among the works, and a lot of contradictions,'' Ms. Gingeras said. ''What we wanted was for everyone -- for our moms -- to be able to go see it and experience it in a profound way.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/arts/design/rauschenberg-foundation-gallery-opens-as-a-big-tent.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Left, ''Jack and D. D. Ryan'' by Alex Katz. Behind, work by Norman Rockwell (hanging), Martin Wong, left, and Katy Grannan, center.(C1)
In the show ''We the People,'' from left, a figure by Robert Heinecken and work by May Stevens (behind), Hannah Wilke, David Wojnarowicz, Larry Clark (on floor), Deborah Kass and Shirin Neshat. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAUREN DECICCA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(C5)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



751 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Republicans Intensify Drive To Win Over Jewish Voters


BYLINE: By LIZETTE ALVAREZ


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 1378 words


BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Using billboards, television advertisements and finely honed voter lists, Republicans here and in other battleground states have intensified an effort to lure a small but potentially significant group of new or wavering voters from President Obama.

Focused on South Florida, Ohio and Nevada, the Republican Jewish Coalition, backed mostly by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a Zionist, has begun spending $6.5 million on an air-and-ground strategy to reach Jewish voters who may view Mr. Obama as unreliable on the question of Israel's security. Jewish voters, who generally vote for Democrats in big numbers, overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama in 2008, giving him 78 percent of their vote, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.

In Florida, where the largest share of the $6.5 million is being spent, one of the group's most visible messages is along Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike, including in Boca Raton and in Broward County, areas with large Jewish populations. A series of red-and-blue billboards lament: ''Obama ... Oy Vey!!'' Then ask, ''Had enough?''

Last week, the coalition began the first in a series of ''buyer's remorse'' television ads featuring a Jewish voter concerned about Israel and the economy who declared that he would not vote for Mr. Obama this time around.

The hope among Republican groups is to continue to erode Mr. Obama's deep-seated popularity in the Jewish community, which polls show has dropped slightly since 2008, by emphasizing first Israel and then the economy.

A study of Jewish voters in Florida conducted early this month by the American Jewish Committee showed that about 7 in 10 said they would vote for Mr. Obama. According to the Gallup daily tracking poll conducted from July 1 to Sept. 10, 70 percent of registered Jewish voters planned to vote for Mr. Obama, compared with 25 percent for Mitt Romney. In the spring, Gallup's poll showed Mr. Obama up 64 percent to 29 percent against Mr. Romney.

Some Republicans see those numbers as an opportunity. ''Sixty-nine percent still shows that President Obama has real trouble in the Jewish community, and it hints at the challenges he is facing among a reliable Democratic constituency,'' said Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

''It is a significant drop,'' Mr. Brooks added. ''And keep in mind, it is taken at the height of all the negative press and all the challenges Romney has been facing.''

At the same time, the latest Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely Florida voters showed Mr. Obama with a widening lead, 53 percent to 44 percent.

Democrats said the effort to steer a meaningful number of Jewish votes to Mr. Romney was wishful thinking. Surveys show that most voters are content with Mr. Obama's handling of Israel. And while Israel is important to most Jewish voters, domestic issues hold sway. On issues like immigration, gay rights, abortion and health care, most Jewish voters align with Democrats, analysts say. As the Republican Party tilts further to the right, the task of winning over Jewish voters gets increasingly complicated, analysts add.

The coalition routinely makes a run at Jewish voters -- although never with as much cash as this year -- and walks away with little to show for it, Democrats said. Nineteen percent of Jewish voters are Republicans, according to a March survey by the American Jewish Committee, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

''People understand the president's commitment to the state of Israel,'' said Representative Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who is outspoken on the question of Israel. ''Beyond that, the community really does care about women's rights and seniors and about what the Supreme Court would be like with multiple appointments by Mitt Romney.''

But Mr. Brooks said the coalition was not interested in winning over liberal voters, only a more conservative slice of the community. ''We're not trying to appeal to the hard-core Democratic voters,'' he said.

Jewish voters are coveted on both sides because they register to vote and cast ballots in disproportionally large numbers. As a result, a shift of even 5 percent, or 25,000 voters, in a swing state like Florida, known for its cliffhanger elections, can make a difference, Mr. Brooks said.

In Florida, 3.4 percent of registered voters are Jewish, but they make up as much as 8 percent of the electorate, said Ira M. Sheskin, the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami.

For this reason, the Republican Jewish Coalition is investing on the ground -- not just the air -- in Florida, Ohio and Nevada, the state that is now receiving the money originally intended for Pennsylvania, Republicans said.

Working with research that microtargets Jewish voters who might choose Mr. Romney, the coalition dispatched hundreds of volunteers this month to South Florida and elsewhere to knock on thousands of doors; stuff mailboxes with brochures that exhort, ''We need a president that stands with Israel''; and make 55,000 phone calls. It is also using high-profile Jewish Republicans, like Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's press secretary, to talk to Jewish voters.

''As I like to say, Palm Beach County is ground zero for the Republican Jewish movement,'' said Sid Dinerstein, the garrulous chairman of the Republican Party there, who described a rising chorus of disaffected if discreet Jewish voters in his area. ''The taking for granted of Jewish votes by the Democrats reached a tipping point because of how openly hostile the president is to Israel and the relationship with Israel.''

Israel is the most obvious wedge issue. Republicans portray Mr. Obama's stance on Israel as limp, misguided or worse. Among other things, Mr. Obama's critics say the president has weakened military aid to Israel, is soft on Iran and has snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Last week, another group, Secure America Now, which is backed by two Republican strategists, ran an ad in Florida featuring Mr. Netanyahu making public remarks on Sept. 11. In the ad, Mr. Netanyahu says that while the world waits, Iran gets closer to building a nuclear bomb. ''And I say wait for what?'' he asks. ''Wait until when?''

This is precisely why Marcia Kaleky Stern, 67, who works as an administrator at an online university in South Florida and who says she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and usually backs Democrats, has switched to Mr. Romney.

''He promised to be good to Israel, and I am very, very passionate about Israel,'' Mrs. Stern said. ''The president has proved not to be. Most of the Jewish Democrats, and I hate to say I was one of them until last December, they have their eyes closed.''

But Jewish Democrats say the Republican groups are twisting Mr. Obama's record on the Middle East. In fact, they say, Mr. Obama has showered Israel with large amounts of military aid, put in place sanctions against Iran and met with Mr. Netanyahu nine times since taking office.

''They are distorting the president's stellar record on Israel in their hopes to shave off a couple of votes,'' said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who is chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. ''It's cynical and harmful to Israel to put partisan politics and love of party ahead of a love of Israel.''

Despite their natural kinship with Jewish voters, Democrats say they are not taking them for granted.

In Florida and elsewhere, they have run phone banks and hosted house parties for Jewish voters to discuss Mr. Obama's contributions. They formed Rabbis for Obama, a group of more than 600 rabbis who have endorsed the president. And they have sent high-profile Democrats around the country to speak out, including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

''The amount of money being put in by Adelson and others is unprecedented, and we don't know what the impact is going to be,'' acknowledged Mik Moore, co-founder of the Jewish Council for Education and Research, a ''super PAC'' that supports Mr. Obama and created the ''Great Schlep'' campaign aimed at increasing Jewish support for Mr. Obama in 2008. ''We are taking very seriously what millions of dollars' worth of print and radio ads can do in an election.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us/politics/republicans-go-after-jewish-vote.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: ''As I like to say, Palm Beach County is ground zero for the Republican Jewish movement,'' said Sid Dinerstein, at a party office.
A billboard in Palm Beach County, Fla. Getting even a small percentage of Jewish voters to switch sides can turn an election. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A18)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



752 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?


BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1706 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nope. Not by a long shot. The real question is why negativity is always with us.


A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the "meanest," "nastiest," "most poisonous," and "dirtiest campaign in history," those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.

Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.

Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate's faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation's two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between "God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!" The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.

Jefferson versus Adams may also have the dubious distinction of the being the first time the so-called race card was played. Even then, Jefferson's rivals circulated rumors of his relationship with an enslaved woman - perhaps beginning during his years as the United States minister to France, when Sally Hemings was just 14 years old. It was thanks to the racist undercurrents of this campaign that Jefferson, the target of more conspiracy theories than even Donald Trump could shill, was later said to be

a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of course-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.

"Race has always been an inflammatory subject in campaigns," Richard Brookhiser, the author of several presidential biographies, told me. "In 1844, the Whigs ran slave owner Henry Clay. But he and his running mate, Theodore Frelinghuysen, supported settling freed slaves in Liberia. This was not racist enough for Democrats, who attacked them in verse: 'De nigger vote am quite surprising, We's all for Clay and Frelinghuysing.' "

Entwined suspicions of ethnic difference and foreign connections run like an ugly thread through the fabric of our civic history. The original birthers of American politics, members of the 19th-century Know Nothing Party, were driven by nativist fears exploding in response to the influx of Irish, Chinese and other immigrant groups. In 1856, a popular Know Nothing candidate for president, George Law, was hoist on his own xenophobic petard when supposed evidence of his foreign birth emerged. Mr. Law swore he had been born on a farm in New York, a year after his alleged immigration, but that did not stop his opponents from pursuing this attack with obvious delight.

Nor is this election unique in its willingness to play politics with the loss of American lives. The Obama camp went there first with a "super PAC"-financed ad that blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City steel plant. More recently, Romney adviser Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.

Distasteful as either of these claims may be, they have nothing on the attempt to tar Andrew Jackson as an actual murderer of American militiamen during the War of 1812. While commanding American forces fighting the British in New Orleans, Jackson had approved an execution order for six men convicted of desertion though they had believed their tour of duty had ended. A dozen years later, a broadside describing "The Bloody Deeds of General Jackson" offered the iconic visual of six black coffins arranged below the presidential candidate's name. An accompanying hymn made these attack ads a multimedia experience:

The regulars then he did command
These citizens to kill
And far from home, their wives and land
Their blood he there did spill
And God forbid, our President
This Jackson e'er should be;
Lest we should to his camp be sent,
And shot for mutiny.

Of course, Jackson's campaign could give as well as it got, and its efforts likewise have a contemporary analogue. While some have drawn a parallel between the hidden camera tactics behind Romney's 47 percent video and James O'Keefe's stealth attack portraying Acorn as an enabler of prostitution, Jackson supporters charged that Old Hickory's rival for the White House, the incumbent John Quincy Adams, was an actual pimp.

"Sex was used with special gusto in prudish times," Mr. Brookhiser said. "Adams was charged with supplying an American woman to the czar when he was minister to Russia years earlier. Adams's supporters in turn accused Jackson of bigamy."

The moral character - and intimate entanglements - of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency. In 1884 Grover Cleveland famously dealt with taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" when news spread that he had fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married.

Less well known is a counter-rumor that circulated about Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Hitting the supposedly morally superior Blaine where he lived, Cleveland supporters claimed that Blaine's first-born son, who had died as a toddler 30 years before, had been conceived before Blaine and his wife were married. In an apparent attempt to make it seem as if Blaine was hiding something, vandals chiseled the date of the child's birth from his grave.

Before we count our blessings that we are now far removed from a time when the dead children of politicians were considered fair game, or when an election would be framed unabashedly as a choice between God and no God, it's worth remembering that similar moments have been a part of 2012 all along - from January, when Rick Santorum endured questions about his family's method of grieving for his son Gabriel, to September, when Democrats faced a literal "God or no God" question in their party platform.

If there is anything uniquely negative about this year, it could only be the sheer tonnage of baldly hostile messages bombarding the electorate in the dozen or so states still considered to be in play.

"What may set apart the 2012 campaign from previous elections is the volume of negative ads," said Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College. While the use of deceptive ads by campaign organizations goes back at least as far as Jefferson and Adams, Ms. Deckman noted, recent research shows that while negative ads accounted for 9 percent of all political advertising in 2008, in this election attack ads account for 70 percent of the total. "Given that Election Day is still weeks away," Ms. Deckman said, "from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history."

Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics - even the meanest and nastiest - have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect. Four years ago, Mr. Obama most likely would not have given his pivotal speech on race were it not for the attempts to link him to the divisive rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twenty years earlier, George Bush similarly turned negative associations to his advantage when he countered concerns over his toughness with tales of his time as a decorated fighter pilot and undeniable war hero. After enduring questioning of his manhood at the hands of media ranging from Newsweek to "Doonesbury," the vice president showed that his ability to throw a punch had not diminished by going on the offensive during a live interview with Dan Rather - who is, it must be noted, among those currently lamenting this election as "the worst."

Smear campaigns, whether they contain a kernel of truth or are based on outright lies, allow candidates to demonstrate how they respond under the strain of conditions most other Americans would find intolerable. As the historian Gil Troy has written, brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because - unlikely as it seems - they work.

If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not "Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?" but rather "Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?" The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns - race, religion, sex and death - remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life. No matter how much the economy matters to the outcome, this election is as dirty as many others because voters know they are choosing something other than a manager.

Given the stakes, the most surprising part of our perpetually dirty political system is that all the slings and arrows that once cut so deeply may later seem merely funny, or only instructive. Today's fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow's interesting anecdotes, but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.

Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .

Library of CongressAnti-Whig poster depicting Zachary Taylor as "An Available Candidate," 1848



LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



753 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?


BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1706 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nope. Not by a long shot. The real question is why negativity is always with us.


A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the "meanest," "nastiest," "most poisonous," and "dirtiest campaign in history," those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.

Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.

Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate's faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation's two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between "God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!" The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.

Jefferson versus Adams may also have the dubious distinction of the being the first time the so-called race card was played. Even then, Jefferson's rivals circulated rumors of his relationship with an enslaved woman - perhaps beginning during his years as the United States minister to France, when Sally Hemings was just 14 years old. It was thanks to the racist undercurrents of this campaign that Jefferson, the target of more conspiracy theories than even Donald Trump could shill, was later said to be

a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of course-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.

"Race has always been an inflammatory subject in campaigns," Richard Brookhiser, the author of several presidential biographies, told me. "In 1844, the Whigs ran slave owner Henry Clay. But he and his running mate, Theodore Frelinghuysen, supported settling freed slaves in Liberia. This was not racist enough for Democrats, who attacked them in verse: 'De nigger vote am quite surprising, We's all for Clay and Frelinghuysing.' "

Entwined suspicions of ethnic difference and foreign connections run like an ugly thread through the fabric of our civic history. The original birthers of American politics, members of the 19th-century Know Nothing Party, were driven by nativist fears exploding in response to the influx of Irish, Chinese and other immigrant groups. In 1856, a popular Know Nothing candidate for president, George Law, was hoist on his own xenophobic petard when supposed evidence of his foreign birth emerged. Mr. Law swore he had been born on a farm in New York, a year after his alleged immigration, but that did not stop his opponents from pursuing this attack with obvious delight.

Nor is this election unique in its willingness to play politics with the loss of American lives. The Obama camp went there first with a "super PAC"-financed ad that blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City steel plant. More recently, Romney adviser Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.

Distasteful as either of these claims may be, they have nothing on the attempt to tar Andrew Jackson as an actual murderer of American militiamen during the War of 1812. While commanding American forces fighting the British in New Orleans, Jackson had approved an execution order for six men convicted of desertion though they had believed their tour of duty had ended. A dozen years later, a broadside describing "The Bloody Deeds of General Jackson" offered the iconic visual of six black coffins arranged below the presidential candidate's name. An accompanying hymn made these attack ads a multimedia experience:

The regulars then he did command
These citizens to kill
And far from home, their wives and land
Their blood he there did spill
And God forbid, our President
This Jackson e'er should be;
Lest we should to his camp be sent,
And shot for mutiny.

Of course, Jackson's campaign could give as well as it got, and its efforts likewise have a contemporary analogue. While some have drawn a parallel between the hidden camera tactics behind Romney's 47 percent video and James O'Keefe's stealth attack portraying Acorn as an enabler of prostitution, Jackson supporters charged that Old Hickory's rival for the White House, the incumbent John Quincy Adams, was an actual pimp.

"Sex was used with special gusto in prudish times," Mr. Brookhiser said. "Adams was charged with supplying an American woman to the czar when he was minister to Russia years earlier. Adams's supporters in turn accused Jackson of bigamy."

The moral character - and intimate entanglements - of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency. In 1884 Grover Cleveland famously dealt with taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" when news spread that he had fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married.

Less well known is a counter-rumor that circulated about Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Hitting the supposedly morally superior Blaine where he lived, Cleveland supporters claimed that Blaine's first-born son, who had died as a toddler 30 years before, had been conceived before Blaine and his wife were married. In an apparent attempt to make it seem as if Blaine was hiding something, vandals chiseled the date of the child's birth from his grave.

Before we count our blessings that we are now far removed from a time when the dead children of politicians were considered fair game, or when an election would be framed unabashedly as a choice between God and no God, it's worth remembering that similar moments have been a part of 2012 all along - from January, when Rick Santorum endured questions about his family's method of grieving for his son Gabriel, to September, when Democrats faced a literal "God or no God" question in their party platform.

If there is anything uniquely negative about this year, it could only be the sheer tonnage of baldly hostile messages bombarding the electorate in the dozen or so states still considered to be in play.

"What may set apart the 2012 campaign from previous elections is the volume of negative ads," said Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College. While the use of deceptive ads by campaign organizations goes back at least as far as Jefferson and Adams, Ms. Deckman noted, recent research shows that while negative ads accounted for 9 percent of all political advertising in 2008, in this election attack ads account for 70 percent of the total. "Given that Election Day is still weeks away," Ms. Deckman said, "from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history."

Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics - even the meanest and nastiest - have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect. Four years ago, Mr. Obama most likely would not have given his pivotal speech on race were it not for the attempts to link him to the divisive rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twenty years earlier, George Bush similarly turned negative associations to his advantage when he countered concerns over his toughness with tales of his time as a decorated fighter pilot and undeniable war hero. After enduring questioning of his manhood at the hands of media ranging from Newsweek to "Doonesbury," the vice president showed that his ability to throw a punch had not diminished by going on the offensive during a live interview with Dan Rather - who is, it must be noted, among those currently lamenting this election as "the worst."

Smear campaigns, whether they contain a kernel of truth or are based on outright lies, allow candidates to demonstrate how they respond under the strain of conditions most other Americans would find intolerable. As the historian Gil Troy has written, brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because - unlikely as it seems - they work.

If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not "Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?" but rather "Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?" The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns - race, religion, sex and death - remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life. No matter how much the economy matters to the outcome, this election is as dirty as many others because voters know they are choosing something other than a manager.

Given the stakes, the most surprising part of our perpetually dirty political system is that all the slings and arrows that once cut so deeply may later seem merely funny, or only instructive. Today's fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow's interesting anecdotes, but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.

Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .

Library of CongressAnti-Whig poster depicting Zachary Taylor as "An Available Candidate," 1848



LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



754 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?


BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1736 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nope. Not by a long shot. The real question is why negativity is always with us.


A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the "meanest," "nastiest," "most poisonous," and "dirtiest campaign in history," those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.

Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.

Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate's faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation's two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between "God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!" The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.

Jefferson versus Adams may also have the dubious distinction of the being the first time the so-called race card was played. Even then, Jefferson's rivals circulated rumors of his relationship with an enslaved woman - perhaps beginning during his years as the United States minister to France, when Sally Hemings was just 14 years old. It was thanks to the racist undercurrents of this campaign that Jefferson, the target of more conspiracy theories than even Donald Trump could shill, was later said to be

a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of course-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.

"Race has always been an inflammatory subject in campaigns," Richard Brookhiser, the author of several presidential biographies, told me. "In 1844, the Whigs ran slave owner Henry Clay. But he and his running mate, Theodore Frelinghuysen, supported settling freed slaves in Liberia. This was not racist enough for Democrats, who attacked them in verse: 'De nigger vote am quite surprising, We's all for Clay and Frelinghuysing.' "

Entwined suspicions of ethnic difference and foreign connections run like an ugly thread through the fabric of our civic history. The original birthers of American politics, members of the 19th-century Know Nothing Party, were driven by nativist fears exploding in response to the influx of Irish, Chinese and other immigrant groups. In 1856, a popular Know Nothing candidate for president, George Law, was hoist on his own xenophobic petard when supposed evidence of his foreign birth emerged. Mr. Law swore he had been born on a farm in New York, a year after his alleged immigration, but that did not stop his opponents from pursuing this attack with obvious delight.

Library of CongressAnti-Whig poster depicting Zachary Taylor as "An Available Candidate," 1848

Nor is this election unique in its willingness to play politics with the loss of American lives. The Obama camp went there first with a "super PAC"-financed ad that blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City steel plant. More recently, Romney adviser Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.

Distasteful as either of these claims may be, they have nothing on the 1848 image of the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor sitting on a pile of human skulls (a sharp critique of the kind of experience he had gained during the Mexican American War) or on the attempt to tar Andrew Jackson as an actual murderer of American militiamen during the War of 1812. While commanding American forces fighting the British in New Orleans, Jackson had approved an execution order for six men convicted of desertion though they had believed their tour of duty had ended. A dozen years later, a broadside describing "The Bloody Deeds of General Jackson" offered the iconic visual of six black coffins arranged below the presidential candidate's name. An accompanying hymn made these attack ads a multimedia experience:

The regulars then he did command
These citizens to kill
And far from home, their wives and land
Their blood he there did spill
And God forbid, our President
This Jackson e'er should be;
Lest we should to his camp be sent,
And shot for mutiny.

Of course, Jackson's campaign could give as well as it got, and its efforts likewise have a contemporary analogue. While some have drawn a parallel between the hidden camera tactics behind Romney's 47 percent video and James O'Keefe's stealth attack portraying Acorn as an enabler of prostitution, Jackson supporters charged that Old Hickory's rival for the White House, the incumbent John Quincy Adams, was an actual pimp.

"Sex was used with special gusto in prudish times," Mr. Brookhiser said. "Adams was charged with supplying an American woman to the czar when he was minister to Russia years earlier. Adams's supporters in turn accused Jackson of bigamy."

The moral character - and intimate entanglements - of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency. In 1884 Grover Cleveland famously dealt with taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" when news spread that he had fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married.

Less well known is a counter-rumor that circulated about Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Hitting the supposedly morally superior Blaine where he lived, Cleveland supporters claimed that Blaine's first-born son, who had died as a toddler 30 years before, had been conceived before Blaine and his wife were married. In an apparent attempt to make it seem as if Blaine was hiding something, vandals chiseled the date of the child's birth from his grave.

Before we count our blessings that we are now far removed from a time when the dead children of politicians were considered fair game, or when an election would be framed unabashedly as a choice between God and no God, it's worth remembering that similar moments have been a part of 2012 all along - from January, when Rick Santorum endured questions about his family's method of grieving for his son Gabriel, to September, when Democrats faced a literal "God or no God" question in their party platform.

If there is anything uniquely negative about this year, it could only be the sheer tonnage of baldly hostile messages bombarding the electorate in the dozen or so states still considered to be in play.

"What may set apart the 2012 campaign from previous elections is the volume of negative ads," said Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College. While the use of deceptive ads by campaign organizations goes back at least as far as Jefferson and Adams, Ms. Deckman noted, recent research shows that while negative ads accounted for 9 percent of all political advertising in 2008, in this election attack ads account for 70 percent of the total. "Given that Election Day is still weeks away," Ms. Deckman said, "from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history."

Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics - even the meanest and nastiest - have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect. Four years ago, Mr. Obama most likely would not have given his pivotal speech on race were it not for the attempts to link him to the divisive rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twenty years earlier, George Bush similarly turned negative associations to his advantage when he countered concerns over his toughness with tales of his time as a decorated fighter pilot and undeniable war hero. After enduring questioning of his manhood at the hands of media ranging from Newsweek to "Doonesbury," the vice president showed that his ability to throw a punch had not diminished by going on the offensive during a live interview with Dan Rather - who is, it must be noted, among those currently lamenting this election as "the worst."

Smear campaigns, whether they contain a kernel of truth or are based on outright lies, allow candidates to demonstrate how they respond under the strain of conditions most other Americans would find intolerable. As the historian Gil Troy has written, brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because - unlikely as it seems - they work.

If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not "Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?" but rather "Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?" The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns - race, religion, sex and death - remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life. No matter how much the economy matters to the outcome, this election is as dirty as many others because voters know they are choosing something other than a manager.

Given the stakes, the most surprising part of our perpetually dirty political system is that all the slings and arrows that once cut so deeply may later seem merely funny, or only instructive. Today's fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow's interesting anecdotes, but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.

Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .



LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



755 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?


BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1721 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nope. Not by a long shot. The real question is why negativity is always with us.


A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the "meanest," "nastiest," "most poisonous," and "dirtiest campaign in history," those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.

Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.

Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate's faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation's two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between "God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!" The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.

Jefferson versus Adams may also have the dubious distinction of the being the first time the so-called race card was played. Even then, Jefferson's rivals circulated rumors of his relationship with an enslaved woman - perhaps beginning during his years as the United States minister to France, when Sally Hemings was just 14 years old. It was thanks to the racist undercurrents of this campaign that Jefferson, the target of more conspiracy theories than even Donald Trump could shill, was later said to be

a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of course-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.

"Race has always been an inflammatory subject in campaigns," Richard Brookhiser, the author of several presidential biographies, told me. "In 1844, the Whigs ran slave owner Henry Clay. But he and his running mate, Theodore Frelinghuysen, supported settling freed slaves in Liberia. This was not racist enough for Democrats, who attacked them in verse: 'De nigger vote am quite surprising, We's all for Clay and Frelinghuysing.' "

Entwined suspicions of ethnic difference and foreign connections run like an ugly thread through the fabric of our civic history. The original birthers of American politics, members of the 19th-century Know Nothing Party, were driven by nativist fears exploding in response to the influx of Irish, Chinese and other immigrant groups. In 1856, a popular Know Nothing candidate for president, George Law, was hoist on his own xenophobic petard when supposed evidence of his foreign birth emerged. Mr. Law swore he had been born on a farm in New York, a year after his alleged immigration, but that did not stop his opponents from pursuing this attack with obvious delight.

Nor is this election unique in its willingness to play politics with the loss of American lives. The Obama camp went there first with a "super PAC"-financed ad that blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City steel plant. More recently, Romney adviser Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.

Distasteful as either of these claims may be, they have nothing on the 1848 image of the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor sitting on a pile of human skulls (a sharp critique of the kind of experience he had gained during the Mexican-American War) or on the attempt to tar Andrew Jackson as an actual murderer of American militiamen during the War of 1812. While commanding American forces fighting the British in New Orleans, Jackson had approved an execution order for six men convicted of desertion though they had believed their tour of duty had ended. A dozen years later, a broadside describing "The Bloody Deeds of General Jackson" offered the iconic visual of six black coffins arranged below the presidential candidate's name. An accompanying hymn made these attack ads a multimedia experience:

The regulars then he did command
These citizens to kill
And far from home, their wives and land
Their blood he there did spill
And God forbid, our President
This Jackson e'er should be;
Lest we should to his camp be sent,
And shot for mutiny.

Of course, Jackson's campaign could give as well as it got, and its efforts likewise have a contemporary analogue. While some have drawn a parallel between the hidden camera tactics behind Romney's 47 percent video and James O'Keefe's stealth attack portraying Acorn as an enabler of prostitution, Jackson supporters charged that Old Hickory's rival for the White House, the incumbent John Quincy Adams, was an actual pimp.

"Sex was used with special gusto in prudish times," Mr. Brookhiser said. "Adams was charged with supplying an American woman to the czar when he was minister to Russia years earlier. Adams's supporters in turn accused Jackson of bigamy."

The moral character - and intimate entanglements - of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency. In 1884 Grover Cleveland famously dealt with taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" when news spread that he had fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married.

Less well known is a counter-rumor that circulated about Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Hitting the supposedly morally superior Blaine where he lived, Cleveland supporters claimed that Blaine's first-born son, who had died as a toddler 30 years before, had been conceived before Blaine and his wife were married. In an apparent attempt to make it seem as if Blaine was hiding something, vandals chiseled the date of the child's birth from his grave.

Before we count our blessings that we are now far removed from a time when the dead children of politicians were considered fair game, or when an election would be framed unabashedly as a choice between God and no God, it's worth remembering that similar moments have been a part of 2012 all along - from January, when Rick Santorum endured questions about his family's method of grieving for his son Gabriel, to September, when Democrats faced a literal "God or no God" question in their party platform.

If there is anything uniquely negative about this year, it could only be the sheer tonnage of baldly hostile messages bombarding the electorate in the dozen or so states still considered to be in play.

"What may set apart the 2012 campaign from previous elections is the volume of negative ads," said Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College. While the use of deceptive ads by campaign organizations goes back at least as far as Jefferson and Adams, Ms. Deckman noted, recent research shows that while negative ads accounted for 9 percent of all political advertising in 2008, in this election attack ads account for 70 percent of the total. "Given that Election Day is still weeks away," Ms. Deckman said, "from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history."

Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics - even the meanest and nastiest - have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect. Four years ago, Mr. Obama most likely would not have given his pivotal speech on race were it not for the attempts to link him to the divisive rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twenty years earlier, George Bush similarly turned negative associations to his advantage when he countered concerns over his toughness with tales of his time as a decorated fighter pilot and undeniable war hero. After enduring questioning of his manhood at the hands of media ranging from Newsweek to "Doonesbury," the vice president showed that his ability to throw a punch had not diminished by going on the offensive during a live interview with Dan Rather - who is, it must be noted, among those currently lamenting this election as "the worst."

Smear campaigns, whether they contain a kernel of truth or are based on outright lies, allow candidates to demonstrate how they respond under the strain of conditions most other Americans would find intolerable. As the historian Gil Troy has written, brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because - unlikely as it seems - they work.

If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not "Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?" but rather "Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?" The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns - race, religion, sex and death - remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life. No matter how much the economy matters to the outcome, this election is as dirty as many others because voters know they are choosing something other than a manager.

Given the stakes, the most surprising part of our perpetually dirty political system is that all the slings and arrows that once cut so deeply may later seem merely funny, or only instructive. Today's fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow's interesting anecdotes, but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.

Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .



LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



756 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Is This the Nastiest Election Ever?


BYLINE: PETER MANSEAU


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1721 words



HIGHLIGHT: Nope. Not by a long shot. The real question is why negativity is always with us.


A month after pundits declared the current presidential contest the "meanest," "nastiest," "most poisonous," and "dirtiest campaign in history," those summer laments already seem like poignant reminders of a kinder, gentler time. Thanks to recent efforts to score political points on violence in Egypt and Libya, and charges of class warfare rising on both sides, this mean and nasty season has only gotten worse.

Yet as bad as this election may seem, it is hardly original in its biliousness. Its protagonists often appear to be reading from a borrowed script, delivering lackluster renditions of the truly inspired negative campaign tactics that have made American politics a blood sport from the start.

Concerned that the supposedly hands-off topic of a candidate's faith has become too much a factor in 2012? Compared to the elections of 1796 and 1800, this contest has all the inter-religious animosity of a Lutheran versus Methodist slow pitch softball game. In the earliest of the nation's two-party elections, the match-up of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave voters a choice, according to Adams supporters, between "God and a religious president, or Jefferson and no God!" The pious allegedly buried Bibles in their gardens, in fear that President Jefferson would gather holy books for the pyre upon inauguration.

Jefferson versus Adams may also have the dubious distinction of the being the first time the so-called race card was played. Even then, Jefferson's rivals circulated rumors of his relationship with an enslaved woman - perhaps beginning during his years as the United States minister to France, when Sally Hemings was just 14 years old. It was thanks to the racist undercurrents of this campaign that Jefferson, the target of more conspiracy theories than even Donald Trump could shill, was later said to be

a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake (made of course-ground Southern corn), bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he had acquired a taste during his residence among the French.

"Race has always been an inflammatory subject in campaigns," Richard Brookhiser, the author of several presidential biographies, told me. "In 1844, the Whigs ran slave owner Henry Clay. But he and his running mate, Theodore Frelinghuysen, supported settling freed slaves in Liberia. This was not racist enough for Democrats, who attacked them in verse: 'De nigger vote am quite surprising, We's all for Clay and Frelinghuysing.' "

Entwined suspicions of ethnic difference and foreign connections run like an ugly thread through the fabric of our civic history. The original birthers of American politics, members of the 19th-century Know Nothing Party, were driven by nativist fears exploding in response to the influx of Irish, Chinese and other immigrant groups. In 1856, a popular Know Nothing candidate for president, George Law, was hoist on his own xenophobic petard when supposed evidence of his foreign birth emerged. Mr. Law swore he had been born on a farm in New York, a year after his alleged immigration, but that did not stop his opponents from pursuing this attack with obvious delight.

Nor is this election unique in its willingness to play politics with the loss of American lives. The Obama camp went there first with a "super PAC"-financed ad that blamed Mitt Romney for the death of a woman who lost her health insurance when Bain Capital closed a Kansas City steel plant. More recently, Romney adviser Richard Williamson suggested that the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi might have been avoided if his man had been on watch.

Distasteful as either of these claims may be, they have nothing on the 1848 image of the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor sitting on a pile of human skulls (a sharp critique of the kind of experience he had gained during the Mexican-American War) or on the attempt to tar Andrew Jackson as an actual murderer of American militiamen during the War of 1812. While commanding American forces fighting the British in New Orleans, Jackson had approved an execution order for six men convicted of desertion though they had believed their tour of duty had ended. A dozen years later, a broadside describing "The Bloody Deeds of General Jackson" offered the iconic visual of six black coffins arranged below the presidential candidate's name. An accompanying hymn made these attack ads a multimedia experience:

The regulars then he did command
These citizens to kill
And far from home, their wives and land
Their blood he there did spill
And God forbid, our President
This Jackson e'er should be;
Lest we should to his camp be sent,
And shot for mutiny.

Of course, Jackson's campaign could give as well as it got, and its efforts likewise have a contemporary analogue. While some have drawn a parallel between the hidden camera tactics behind Romney's 47 percent video and James O'Keefe's stealth attack portraying Acorn as an enabler of prostitution, Jackson supporters charged that Old Hickory's rival for the White House, the incumbent John Quincy Adams, was an actual pimp.

"Sex was used with special gusto in prudish times," Mr. Brookhiser said. "Adams was charged with supplying an American woman to the czar when he was minister to Russia years earlier. Adams's supporters in turn accused Jackson of bigamy."

The moral character - and intimate entanglements - of the candidates has been a common front in the battle of for the presidency. In 1884 Grover Cleveland famously dealt with taunts of "Ma, Ma, where's my pa?" when news spread that he had fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married.

Less well known is a counter-rumor that circulated about Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Hitting the supposedly morally superior Blaine where he lived, Cleveland supporters claimed that Blaine's first-born son, who had died as a toddler 30 years before, had been conceived before Blaine and his wife were married. In an apparent attempt to make it seem as if Blaine was hiding something, vandals chiseled the date of the child's birth from his grave.

Before we count our blessings that we are now far removed from a time when the dead children of politicians were considered fair game, or when an election would be framed unabashedly as a choice between God and no God, it's worth remembering that similar moments have been a part of 2012 all along - from January, when Rick Santorum endured questions about his family's method of grieving for his son Gabriel, to September, when Democrats faced a literal "God or no God" question in their party platform.

If there is anything uniquely negative about this year, it could only be the sheer tonnage of baldly hostile messages bombarding the electorate in the dozen or so states still considered to be in play.

"What may set apart the 2012 campaign from previous elections is the volume of negative ads," said Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College. While the use of deceptive ads by campaign organizations goes back at least as far as Jefferson and Adams, Ms. Deckman noted, recent research shows that while negative ads accounted for 9 percent of all political advertising in 2008, in this election attack ads account for 70 percent of the total. "Given that Election Day is still weeks away," Ms. Deckman said, "from an advertising perspective, this election could well be the most negative in history."

Is it possible that anything good could come of this? Negative campaign tactics - even the meanest and nastiest - have their place in the theater of American politics, but they do not always have their desired effect. Four years ago, Mr. Obama most likely would not have given his pivotal speech on race were it not for the attempts to link him to the divisive rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Twenty years earlier, George Bush similarly turned negative associations to his advantage when he countered concerns over his toughness with tales of his time as a decorated fighter pilot and undeniable war hero. After enduring questioning of his manhood at the hands of media ranging from Newsweek to "Doonesbury," the vice president showed that his ability to throw a punch had not diminished by going on the offensive during a live interview with Dan Rather - who is, it must be noted, among those currently lamenting this election as "the worst."

Smear campaigns, whether they contain a kernel of truth or are based on outright lies, allow candidates to demonstrate how they respond under the strain of conditions most other Americans would find intolerable. As the historian Gil Troy has written, brutal campaigns endure not only because they let off the collective steam of 300 million opinionated Americans, but because - unlikely as it seems - they work.

If there is to be no end to the negativity, perhaps the question we should be asking is not "Is this campaign the dirtiest ever?" but rather "Why have our elections been so negative in the same ways for so long?" The enduring themes of the supposedly worst campaigns - race, religion, sex and death - remind us of their centrality not just to politics, but to every aspect of American life. No matter how much the economy matters to the outcome, this election is as dirty as many others because voters know they are choosing something other than a manager.

Given the stakes, the most surprising part of our perpetually dirty political system is that all the slings and arrows that once cut so deeply may later seem merely funny, or only instructive. Today's fighting words will be reduced to tomorrow's interesting anecdotes, but the true questions at the heart of every presidential election will remain.

Historically Corrected is a project of students and faculty at Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience where Peter Manseau is a scholar in residence. Students of Washington College's Writing for Media seminar contributed research. To learn more about the Historically Corrected project, click here .



LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



757 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


'Super PAC' and Labor Group Team Up in Anti-Romney Radio Ad


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 443 words



HIGHLIGHT: The new ad from Priorities USA Action and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, plays some of the audio from a secretly taped video of Mitt Romney speaking about 47 percent of voters.


A Democratic "super PAC" is joining forces with a labor group to begin a $1.25 million radio ad campaign on Thursday that starts with a direct attack on Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch millionaire who has insulted nearly half of the country.

The one-minute radio ad, by Priorities USA Action and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, plays some of the audio from a secretly taped video of Mr. Romney speaking about 47 percent of Americans at a fund-raiser.

"150 million Americans: seniors, veterans, the disabled," an announcer says in the ad. "Romney attacked them when he thought no one else was listening."

The ad accuses the Republican presidential nominee of wanting to raise taxes on the middle class by $2,000 while giving millionaires a tax cut.

"Mitt Romney's just not looking out for us," the announcer in the ad says.

The radio ad will run in Ohio and Virginia, two of the most critical battleground states, starting this week. The ad or others ads that might follow will continue running throughout the rest of the campaign.

The super PACs backing Mr. Obama have been particularly aggressive in attacking Mr. Romney's wealth on the president's behalf. Priorities USA Action, which is run by former aides to Mr. Obama, have spent millions to highlight the Republican candidate's background in business and his investments.

"Mitt Romney will not stand up for students, veterans, seniors and hard-working Americans looking to make ends meet, but he has no qualms about protecting tax loopholes so he and his fellow multimillionaires can pay a lower rate," said Paul Begala, a senior adviser for the group. "Romney's agenda would be a blow to the middle class: slash education, turn Medicare into a voucher program and raise taxes on hard-working families."

For the radio campaign, the group is teaming up with the labor federation, which has also focused its efforts on accusing Mr. Romney of not being interested in helping working people.

"Romney's complete disdain for the middle class, the hard-working men and women of this country, the 47 percent is reprehensible," said Seth Johnson, the assistant political director of the labor group.

Aides to Mr. Romney have acknowledged privately that his comments about the 47 percent from the fund-raiser have hurt the campaign. Polls in several battleground states show Mr. Obama with significant leads over Mr. Romney.

They argue, however, that the impact of the comments is already beginning to fade, and will be nothing but a distant memory by the time Election Day rolls around in six weeks.

The Democratic groups behind the radio ads are trying to make sure that doesn't happen.


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



758 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Sept. 26: Could 2012 Be Like 2008?


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 2038 words



HIGHLIGHT: If the election were held today, the FiveThirtyEight statistical model shows President Obama favored in all but two of the states he won in 2008.


There's no point in putting it gently: Mitt Romney had one of his worst polling days of the year on Wednesday.

It began with a series of polls from The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University, released early Wednesday morning, which gave President Obama leads of between 9 and 11 points in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Later in the day, Mr. Romney got polls showing unfavorable numbers for him in Colorado and Iowa.

Unlike many recent days, when Mr. Obama's national polls were slightly less euphoric than his swing state surveys, Wednesday's national polls seemed to support the notion that Mr. Obama has a clear lead in the race. The Gallup national tracking poll gave Mr. Obama a six-point lead among registered voters, close to his high mark on the year in that survey. The online tracking poll conducted by Ipsos gave him a six-point lead among likely voters. Another online tracking poll, from the RAND Corporation, put Mr. Obama's lead at roughly seven and a half percentage points, his largest of the year in that poll. And a national poll for Bloomberg produced by the pollster J. Ann Selzer, who has a strong track record, put Mr. Obama six points ahead.

The exception was the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, which gave Mitt Romney a two-point lead among likely voters. (This was in the version of the poll that included voters who leaned toward a candidate, which is the one that FiveThirtyEight uses for all surveys.)

What to think of the Rasmussen poll? Their surveys usually have a Republican lean, but it seems to have gotten stronger in the last few weeks. It has also been stronger in some years than others. Rasmussen got reasonably good results in years like 2006 and 2008 when their polls were close to the consensus. However, their polls were the least accurate of the major polling firms in 2010, when they had an especially strong Republicanhouse-effect. The same was true in 2000, when they had a three- or four-point statistical bias toward Republican candidates.

This feature is not unique to Rasmussen Reports: a poll that substantially differs from the consensus, whether in a Democratic or Republican direction, is usually not one that you'll want to bet on. And there is even less reason to do so when a poll is taking a number of methodological shortcuts, while others are being more thorough. But there have been years when the whole polling average has been off in one direction or another, and the "outlier" polls turn out to look good. It's also the case that a broken clock is right twice a day.

Accounting for all of the data, including the Rasmussen Reports poll, the FiveThirtyEight forecast showed Mr. Obama making gains. His probability of winning the Electoral College is now listed at 81.9 percent, his highest figure of the year and up from 79.7 percent on Tuesday.

We're at a point in the race, however, when it's important to contrast what we think might happen on Nov. 6 with what we're seeing in the polls at the moment. Right now, there is a gap between these two things.

Although Mr. Obama is now the clear favorite in the Nov. 6 forecast, his advantage is larger in the FiveThirtyEight "now-cast," which projects what would happen in an election held today.

The "now-cast" estimates that Mr. Obama would have a 97.8 percent chance of winning an election held today. Further, it pegs his advantage at five and a half percentage points in the national popular vote.

By contrast, the Nov. 6 forecast expects Mr. Obama to win by a smaller margin, 3.6 percentage points, on Election Day itself. Two things account for this disparity.

First, there are still some effects from the convention bounce penalty that the Nov. 6 forecast applies to Mr. Obama's polls, but which the "now-cast" does not. The convention bounce adjustment is phasing out of the model, but it hasn't done so completely.

Second, the Nov. 6 forecast is still using economic data along with the polls. By design, the economic component of the forecast receives less and less weight over the course of the year, since it becomes less and less likely that there will be predictable effects from economic news that are not already priced into the polls. (By Election Day itself, the economic component of the model will phase out completely, meaning that the forecast will become equivalent to the "now-cast.") For the time being, however, the economic index still accounts for about 30 percent of the forecast.

The way that the economic index evaluates the data, Mr. Obama is the favorite in the race. However, he is only a slight one, and the economic index has been declining recently, following a poor report on manufacturing activity and a decline in the stock market over the last week on renewed investor concerns about Europe.

Mr. Obama is considered a modest favorite by the economic model because he is the incumbent president, and incumbents are favored given average economic conditions. The economy is decidedly below-average, but it is not recessionary, and there have been just enough bright spots in the data that Mr. Obama remains in the buffer zone where his incumbency advantage could outweigh it.

However, the economic index would point toward a two- or three-point win for Mr. Obama in the popular vote, rather than the five- or six-point advantage that he has enjoyed in the most recent polls. Thus, the economic index is exerting some downward pressure on Mr. Obama's Nov. 6 forecast.

If the election were held today, however, it could look pretty ugly for Mr. Romney. The "now-cast" has Mr. Obama favored in all the states he won in 2008 except for Indiana, where he is several points behind, and North Carolina, which it shows as an almost exact tie. It would project Mr. Obama to win 337 electoral votes, slightly fewer than the 365 that he won in 2008.

Beneath the surface, however, there are some bigger differences in the individual states. In the table below, I've compared how Mr. Obama performed in each of the 50 states in 2008 against what the "now-cast" estimates would happen in an election held today.

In 14 of the 50 states, the "now-cast" would bet on Mr. Obama winning by a larger margin than he did in 2008. They are an eclectic mix and include the following:

Two states, Arizona and Alaska, that were home to the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates in 2008.

Three states in New England: Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island. There is an interesting split this year among the six New England states, with Mr. Obama running very well in these three, which are poorer, but not as well in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where voters are better off.

Several states in theupland South, like Kentucky and Tennessee, where polls have sometimes shown Mr. Obama running ahead of his 2008 numbers. This is a region of the country where a higher-than-average number of voters said in exit polls that the race of the candidates played a role in their voting decision. It is possible that some of these racial effects have abated as Mr. Obama has become more of a familiar presence. It is also possible that this is a region of the country where polls still exaggerate the standing of African-American candidates. (This phenomenon, termed the Bradley Effect, no longer seems to hold in most parts of the country.)

New York, where Mr. Obama's numbers have been quite strong in the polls, and which has gone from a state where Republicans could sometimes compete into one that seems completely lost for them.

Finally, two swing states: Florida and Ohio.

The utter weirdness of this mix - how often do you see Ohio, New York, Kentucky and Vermont on the same list? - is one reason to be skeptical that either candidate has all that much of an advantage in the Electoral College relative to his position in the popular vote.

With Mr. Obama's strong run of polling in the swing states recently, the model has reverted to figuring that he would have just the slightest Electoral College edge in an election in which the popular vote were exactly tied. But it is a slight advantage indeed: the model estimates that Mr. Obama would have a 53 percent chance of winning the Electoral College under those conditions.

If Mr. Obama were to choose any two states in which to overperform, Ohio and Florida are pretty good picks, and both represent huge problems for Mr. Romney. It is too late in the race, and there are too many polls there, to write off Mr. Obama's polling in these states as a fluke - although the set of Quinnipiac polls certainly present a rather optimistic case.

Mr. Obama is also polling fairly close to his 2008 levels in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, two states that Mr. Romney has not contested as vigorously as John McCain did four years ago. Some recent polls also show Mr. Obama near his 2008 numbers in Virginia and North Carolina, where demographic and cultural shifts seem to be working in favor of Democrats.

But there are a number of other swing states in which Mr. Obama is still polling well off his 2008 pace. Mr. Obama's numbers have perked up in Iowa and Colorado, for instance - but polls are suggestive of a lead for him in the mid-single-digits there, when he won both states by nine percentage points in 2008.

Mr. Obama is a heavy favorite in Michigan, but is highly unlikely to replicate his 2008 performance, when Mr. McCain pulled out of the state early and he won it by more than 16 points. He is also unlikely to duplicate his 12-point margin of victory in Nevada, where economic conditions are so poor as to be almost depressionary (Nevada's median household income fell to $47,043 in 2011 from $54,744 in 2008) -- or in Wisconsin, in which Paul D. Ryan should help Mr. Romney at least a little bit.

Because he won some of these states by such a wide margin in 2008, Mr. Obama has a lot of cushion in them. Michigan, in particular, looks all but lost for Mr. Romney, and Wisconsin may be getting that way.

But in order to say that Mr. Obama had an especial advantage in the Electoral College relative to his standing in the popular vote, we'd need to see at least one or two more of these states start polling in the high single digits for him, as Ohio now is. If Mr. Obama were polling three points better in Colorado than our current estimate has him, for instance, he'd win the Electoral College in about an additional 2 percent of the time, making him almost an 85 percent favorite, with most of those additional wins coming in cases where he lost the national popular vote.

If Mr. Obama did this in two or more of these states - say, Colorado and Nevada, or Iowa and Virginia - we might say that Mr. Obama had really developed a "blue wall." Right now, we're not quite able to do that. His highly favorable numbers in Ohio and Florida lately offset other swing states where he's likely to underachieve his 2008 numbers by several percentage points.

Still, this Electoral College discussion is going to be academic unless Mr. Romney can reverse his poor run of polling. We'll conclude with a scary thought for Republicans.

Right now, the Nov. 6 forecast projects that Mr. Obama will win the popular vote by 3.6 percentage points. As I mentioned, that does account for about a two-point decline from where Mr. Obama seems to be in the polls right now. Otherwise, however, the model assumes that the uncertainty in the forecast is symmetric: Mr. Obama is as likely to overperform it as underperform it.

If Mr. Obama misses to the downside by 3.7 percentage points, then Mr. Romney would win, at least in the popular vote. However, if Mr. Obama missed to the upside by 3.7 percentage point instead, he'd win the popular vote by 7.3 percentage points, exactly replicating his margin from 2008.

In other words, there looks to be about a 20 percent chance that Mr. Romney will win, but also about a 20 percent chance that Mr. Obama will actually beat his 2008 margin in the popular vote. The smart money is on an outcome somewhere in the middle - as it has been all year. But if you can conceive of a Romney comeback - and you should account for that possibility - you should also allow for the chance that things could get really out of hand, and that Mr. Obama could win in a borderline landslide.


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



759 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Obama Unveils New Ad as Early Voting Begins


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 265 words



HIGHLIGHT: Early voting begins Thursday in Iowa, the first of many battleground states that allow people to cast their ballots well before Election Day on Nov. 6. The Obama campaign said the new ad would also run Florida, Nevada and Colorado.


At two minutes long, President Obama's new ad, "Table," is his longest direct pitch to voters in a television commercial this year. And the stakes could not be higher.

Early voting begins Thursday in Iowa, the first of many battleground states that allow people to cast their ballots well before Election Day on Nov. 6. The Obama campaign said the new ad would run not just in Iowa but in Florida, Colorado and Nevada as well - all of which allow early voting.

"During the last weeks of this campaign, there will be debates, speeches and more ads," the president says, as the ad begins, adding "But if I could sit down with you in your living room or around the kitchen table, here's what I would say."

In his script, the president sticks carefully to the story arc that he and his campaign have tried to lay out in their ads since the spring. He starts by reminding voters of the economic crisis he inherited and explains that progress - albeit too slow and incomplete, in his view - has been made.

"As a nation we are moving forward again. But we have much more to do to get folks back to work, and make the middle class secure again," he says before laying out a four-point plan that includes investing in manufacturing, cutting oil imports, training new math and science teachers and reducing the deficit.

Mitt Romney's plan, he says, would "double down on the same trickle down policies that led to the crisis in the first place."

The ad will have considerable money behind it. On Thursday the Obama campaign reserved more than $6 million in air time in the seven states where it will appear.


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



760 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


September, November: 40 Precious Days to Spend on Early Vote


BYLINE: JEFF ZELENY


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1168 words



HIGHLIGHT: A stream of voters arrived at election offices across Iowa to cast their ballots, and waves of absentee ballots have started landing in mailboxes in 30 other states.


10:44 p.m. | Updated DES MOINES - A stream of voters arrived at election offices across Iowa to cast their ballots. Waves of absentee ballots have started landing in mailboxes in 30 other states. And more than a month before what the calendar says is Election Day, President Obama began delivering his closing argument to voters.

The rise of early voting, which got under way here on Thursday, is changing the rhythms of how Americans elect their presidents. The president is not as fixated on his Election Day showdown with Mitt Romney, but rather on successfully executing a plan to accrue more votes over the next 40 days.

For millions of Americans, the election is no longer on a fixed date. It is increasingly becoming another item on the fall checklist, a civic duty steeped in the convenience of everyday life. The development is reshaping campaigns, with Election Day becoming Election Month for as much as 40 percent of the electorate this year, including voters in the vital swing states of Ohio, Florida, Colorado and others.

"It has made the October surprises way less relevant," said Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, who has built the president's re-election strategy around the growing trend of voting early. One example: a two-minute ad that began running Thursday summing up Mr. Obama's case for re-election. "In a close election, you can increase your number of voters in a very important way."

The president opened his campaign speeches this week with a pitch for early voting, imploring Ohio voters, "I need you to start voting six days from now." It was a not-so-subtle effort to bottle his early success and capitalize on what several polls find is an edge over Mr. Romney in swing states, which could shrink as the remainder of the race unfolds, with the first debate next Wednesday.

As the bell tolled eight from the clock tower of the Polk County Courthouse on Thursday, signaling the moment when the polls here would open, a line stretched down the street from the election office. A subject of conversation among those waiting was a statistic from 2008: Mr. Obama received fewer votes than Senator John McCain on Election Day in Iowa and some other states, but Mr. Obama won those states because his plan was built around a month of voting rather than a day.

The rise of early voting, which is allowed with few restrictions in 32 states and the District of Columbia, has opened a new front in efforts to maximize turnout and find voters through exhaustive micro-targeting. It remains an open question, though, whether making voting more convenient will mean that more people actually take part in the presidential election.

An Iowa law, which national election observers say is the only one of its kind in the country, allows a campaign to gather 100 signatures and petition election officials to create a temporary voting location aimed at serving a particular constituency.

Here in Des Moines, Democrats requested that a voting site be opened Oct. 20 at La Tapatia Tienda Mexicana, a restaurant. Republicans requested a voting site be opened on the same day at Johnston Evangelical Free Church. Election officials granted both requests, along with those for voting sites at libraries, grocery stores and community centers.

When Michelle Obama visits the University of Northern Iowa on Friday, her chief task will not be simply to deliver a speech. She will ask supporters to cast their ballots on the spot, a few steps away at a voting site requested by the campaign and approved by election officials.

While some people will vote in person, even more will do so by mail. The Iowa Secretary of State's office said Democrats had a 5-to-1 edge over Republicans in the numbers of absentee ballots requested statewide - largely because of efforts by the Obama campaign - but Republicans said the numbers would level out over the next five weeks.

"We are going to close that gap in Iowa," said Rick Wiley, political director of the Republican National Committee, which is overseeing early-voting efforts as part of its national field program. He added, "In years past, we were slow to embrace it, but it's foolish not to."

The proportion of people nationwide casting early ballots climbed from 23 percent in 2004 to 31 percent in 2008, according to Michael McDonald, who studies early voting at George Mason University. This year, party strategists estimate that up to 40 percent of voters will cast ballots before Nov. 6, but the proportion is far higher in many battleground states.

In Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, advisers to both campaigns say as many as 70 percent of ballots will be cast before Nov. 6. And in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, the campaigns estimate at least 30 percent of people will vote early. Virginia and New Hampshire are the only battleground states without widespread, no-excuse early voting.

Republican officials in several states acknowledge that the Obama campaign may start with a slight advantage in early voting because Democrats have grown more accustomed to casting their ballots early. To level the playing field, the Republican secretary of state in Ohio sent absentee ballot requests to every registered voter in the state.

Tom Zawistowski, president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, a group affiliated with the Tea Party, sent a message to encourage members to consider voting early. He wrote, "I know we do not like absentee voting or early voting at all, but it is a key part of our election equation now and we need to understand how to use it to our advantage just like the other side does."

Here in Des Moines, the line slowed to a trickle after a few hours on Thursday morning, but the real burst of voting will come when absentee ballots start arriving by mail as early as Friday in voters' mailboxes. The Obama campaign is deploying hundreds of field organizers and volunteers this weekend to "chase ballots," or return envelopes to county election offices. The Republican Party here is sending a mailing to all of its voters, urging them to request an absentee ballot and vote before Election Day.

As Nancy Bobo, 60, stood with other Obama supporters, she wondered aloud where the supporters of Mr. Romney were.

"I don't see them," she said with a smile. "But we're not taking anything for granted. We still have 40 days to go. You never know; things can change on a dime."

But in the northwest corner of Iowa, more than 200 miles away in the town of Orange City, Gert Kooi, 76, was among those voting for Mr. Romney on Thursday.

"I voted today because we might not be here on Election Day, and my mind is long made up," Ms. Kooi said in an interview. She added, "We just don't care for Obama here."

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Orange City, Iowa.



LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



761 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


It Must Be the Polls


BYLINE: JULIET LAPIDOS


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 764 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama's leading in the polls. But the Romney campaign says the polls are all wrong.


Nearly every national poll shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney. Gallup, Ipsos and Bloomberg all have the president up by six points. The RAND Corporation puts Mr. Obama up by seven and a half. Only Rasmussen has Mr. Romney up nationally among likely voters, by two points. Swing state surveys also give Mr. Obama the advantage, with new polls from The New York Times, CBS and Quinnipiac showing Mr. Obama up between 9 and 11 points in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

There's still more than a month until the election. Mr. Obama could lose. Mr. Romney could win. Hanging chads could leave the result up to the Supreme Court. But at the moment it's rational to conclude that Mr. Obama has a better chance of winning. Unless you're on the Romney campaign, or you're a right-wing pundit, in which case it's only natural-in a stages of grief sort of way-to conclude that the polls are all wrong.

On Tuesday Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign's political director, told reporters: "The public polls are what the public polls are. I kind of hope the Obama campaign is basing their campaign decisions on the public polls I have great faith in our data." A new Washington Post poll has Mr. Romney down by 8 points in Ohio, but Mr. Beeson said "We are, by any stretch, inside the margin of error in Ohio." Then on Wednesday Ed Gillespie, a senior advisor to the Romney campaign, said on Fox & Friends that the public polls "are not consistent with our polling." In which case, why not make the internal data public?

One common kvetch is that polling organizations (with the exception of Rasmussen) are over-sampling Democrats, and therefore don't accurately reflect the electorate.  Hugh Hewitt, the radio host, yesterday tweeted "NYT/Quinnipiac is junk, with +9 Ds in Ohio and FLA samples and +11Ds in PA in sample." A Tuesday Fox News segment on how to read "the fine print on political polls" referred to a "continuing discussion" on whether recent surveys include "too many Democrats."

Pollsters counter that it would be unscientific to take an otherwise random sample, and then adjust it to achieve a target partisan split (50-50 Democrat-Republican, for instance). Swing voters, moreover, often identify with whichever party they favor at the moment (they'll call themselves Democrats if they're planning to vote for a Democrat). And as Chris Cillizza wrote recently in The Washington Post, "the simple truth is that Democrats have long enjoyed an edge on the party ID question...[E]ven in very good Republican years nationally (2004 and 2010 being obvious examples) more people still identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans."

The party ID issue gets technical, but the growing class of emotionally unstable pundits thinks there's a full-blown conspiracy afoot. On his radio show Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh said:

The purpose of the people right now, most of them doing these polls, they're trying to make news, not reflect it, they're advancing an agenda. They're all Democrats. They're all liberals. They just have different jobs. The polls are the replacement refs. They see certain things. They don't see other things. They don't call certain things, and other things go by. In this case, what they're trying to do is exactly what they've done in your case: frustrate you, make you pull your hair out, say, what the hell's happening to the country?

Sean Hannity also thinks the media-industrial complex is trying to dampen enthusiasm among Republicans: "The narrative the media would like to advance is, this is over, don't even bother paying attention, let's move on. That's not true by any stretch. These polls are so skewed, so phony, that we need to start paying attention to what's going on so that you won't be deflated."

The National Review recently published an unusually paranoid version of the poll-plot, with John McLaughlin, the Republican pollster, suggesting that the corruption goes to the very top. The president and his allies "want to convince" right-wing voters "falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias."

Here's another conspiracy theory: If Mr. Obama goes on to win the election, Mr. Limbaugh et al. will recycle this narrative to sow doubt about the results.



LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



762 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


Buoyant Obama Courts Military Votes in Virginia


BYLINE: HELENE COOPER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 679 words



HIGHLIGHT: Appearing just a few miles from the shipyard where Mitt Romney announced last month that Representative Paul D. Ryan would be his running mate, President Obama was fighting hard to make a dent in the Republican Party's traditional stranglehold on military votes.


VIRGINIA BEACH - Appearing just a few miles from the shipyard where Mitt Romney announced last month that Representative Paul D. Ryan would be his running mate, President Obama on Thursday was fighting hard to make a dent in the Republican Party's traditional stranglehold on military votes.

Virginia Beach and Norfolk are crucial to both campaigns' hopes of winning Virginia, where the race is widely viewed as one of the closest in the remaining swing states, and one that both camps desperately want to win.

"I still believe in you!" Mr. Obama yelled out to the sea of white, brown and black faces before him. "If you stand with me and work with me, we'll win the Tidewater again. We'll win Virginia again."

Just six days before the first debate, both candidates were in Virginia. Mr. Romney campaigned at a veterans' event in the Washington suburb of Springfield, where he, too, played to the military, promising to stop "devastating job losses" to veterans if he is elected. Mr. Romney also vowed to build a military that is "so strong that no one wants to test it."

The state has 13 electoral votes, but pathways to victory for either man get far steeper if Virginia is taken out of the column. This is especially the case for Mr. Romney, now that polls show him trailing Mr. Obama in Ohio and Florida.

And yet, with each day that moves the president closer to Election Day - and perhaps because of the recent polling in Ohio and Florida - he has appeared more relaxed, almost as if he is starting to enjoy himself. Surrounded by 7,000 screaming supporters - a crowd as diverse as the Tidewater region, with its naval base and countless veterans - Mr. Obama seemed determined to hang on to his small but steady lead in the state polls.

"How's it going, Virginia Beach?" the president shouted. He quickly attached himself to Senator Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat and former Marine who had introduced him in a lengthy windup that trumpeted the president's support for military families. "I could not be prouder," Mr. Obama said, "of a man who has served his country his entire life, as a Marine, as a secretary of the Navy."

The crowd was eating it up, primed beforehand by the cast of colorful characters that make up Virginia Democratic politics. Representative Robert C. Scott, with his thick Southern accent, seemed a particular favorite. He got roars when he recounted how in 2008 CNN called Virginia for Mr. Obama for the first Democratic presidential victory here in 40 years, and then "two minutes later" called the election for Mr. Obama, a story meant to demonstrate how central winning the state has become to presidential aspirations.

Of course, winning the people at this rally looked pretty easy. Attendees were so pumped up that there was almost a stampede when organizers handed out the Obama campaign's "Forward" signs.

As is becoming the norm before the president enters a rally, the crowd took over as Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" came on, belting out the lyrics like the president did at the Apollo Theater. By the time Mr. Webb came out to introduce the president, the din at Farm Bureau Live - an outdoor concert amphitheater - sounded like a Bruce Springsteen concert.

The Obama campaign also released a two-minute television ad on Thursday, in which Mr. Obama pitches an economic plan that he says will create one million manufacturing jobs, cut oil imports and increase education jobs.

Mr. Obama characterized the plan as a "new economic patriotism." Speaking in Virginia Beach, he said: "During campaign season, we always hear a lot about patriotism. Well, you know what? It's time for a little economic patriotism."

The ad will be shown in seven swing states: Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire. And with each poll that shows Mr. Obama ahead in Florida and Ohio and clinging to his narrow lead in Virginia, the president and his aides have seemed a little more buoyant - to the point that the campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, cautioned that "if we need to pass out horse blinders to all of our staff, we will do that."


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



763 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Ross Douthat)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


The Media Bias That Matters


BYLINE: ROSS DOUTHAT


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 701 words



HIGHLIGHT: How the press's horse race fixation may be delivering the election to Obama. 


At the end of a post dismissing conservative paranoia about the polls showing the president pulling away, Jonathan Chait makes an important argument-against-interest:

The broader fear behind poll denialism is also one that ought to be treated with sympathy ... The conspiracy may be crazy, but it is surely true that rampant horse race coverage affects the outcome of the race. It may not be original to point this out, but it's true - campaign coverage devotes far too much attention to which candidate is winning, and far too little time to conveying information that voters might use to make up their minds. Instead, the horse race coverage takes the place of the substantive coverage, and the candidate with the lead appears decisive and competent, and the trailing candidate faintly ridiculous.

A good deal of what undecided voters who are just now tuning in will learn about Romney is that he's a loser disdained by fellow Republicans. Conservative rage over this fact may be utterly misplaced, but the sentiment itself is perfectly understandable.

This is exactly right, and it's crucial to understanding why the president's re-election odds look ever better in spite of the fact that actual world events - from Libya to the latest growth numbers - haven't been falling out to his advantage lately. There are plenty of stories circulating that might be expected to hurt Obama's political prospects, but given the press's horse-race biases none of them are powerful enough to pull the spotlight away from Romney's flailings: They're either big but not new enough (the lousy economy) or new but not big enough (the administration's shifting Libya stories) to break through the campaign coverage.

The horse race bias has been present throughout the campaign, obviously, but it didn't hurt Romney nearly as much over the summer, because there were more Obama gaffes and blunders to batten on, because the polls weren't moving very much, and because Obama's scorched-earth ad strategy ensured that a lot of the press chatter would be about the unseemliness of his attacks. But beginning with the conventions, we've had a reinforcing, oxygen-devouring sequence of developments - an Obama polling bounce followed by Romney's clumsy Libya gambit followed by the "47 percent" disaster followed by further Obama polling gains - that's made the horse race coverage the only coverage that matters where Romney's prospects are concerned.

As I said in this week's Campaign Stops column, none of this excuses Romney for running such an uncreative campaign, let alone for letting the "47 percent" remarks that may - I said may! - have sealed his fate escape his lips. As a presidential candidate part of your job is to be aware of how easily the horse race narrative can overwhelm whatever story you want the country to be hearing, and to do everything in your power to actively shape a narrative that will inevitably be shaped by the press's zeal for "who's up/who's down" reportage as well. By choosing instead to sit back and play it safe for much of the year, assuming that the underlying story of economic weakness would deliver them the White House no matter what stories drove coverage in the day-to-day, Team Romney set themselves up for exactly the kind of horse-race-driven disaster they've experienced this month.

But just because it was predictable doesn't mean that it's a positive sign, for the press or the republic that it's supposed to serve, that the incumbent president is suddenly gliding to re-election without having to answer for his economic record or explain what will be different about his second term. Romney may deserve his fate, but what Howard Fineman says in the Huffington Post piece I quoted in my Campaign Stops piece still seems apposite: Even if you're unsympathetic to the G.O.P, it's not obviously a good thing that Romney's campaign troubles seem to be looming so much larger in the media coverage of this election than the record of the man who has actually been occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these last four years.



LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



764 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 27, 2012 Thursday


The Early Word: Reach


BYLINE: ASHLEY SOUTHALL


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 387 words



HIGHLIGHT: Political news from today's Times and around the Web, plus a look at what's happening in Washington.


In Today's Times:

Democrats' old deep-pocketed friends are beginning to pour money into Democratic "super PACs" like the groups Republican operatives have used to build their outsized influence in this election. Nicholas Confessore reports that the wealthy liberals who supported Democrats' efforts in 2004 remain on the sidelines, while Democrats draw from old friends like trial lawyers, unions and Hollywood. The financing comes at a crucial time for President Obama, as conservative groups prepare a barrage of attack ads.

In an aggressive effort to clean up the fallout from his "47 percent" comments, Mitt Romney isreaching out to middle-class and working-class voters with an ad aimed at reassuring them that he cares about their plight. Ashley Parker observes that the ad, which comes nine days after the remarks surfaced, reflected Mr. Romney's gamble that the election will be decided in the closing weeks and that Democrats' attacks will not hurt him much.

The president and Mr. Romneyboth stopped in Ohio on Wednesday before the state starts early voting next Tuesday. Helene Cooper writes that Mr. Obama is trying to "gallop ahead" to keep early voters out of Mr. Romney's reach, but Mr. Romney is campaigning hard in Ohio, too. Mr. Obama will visit Virginia on Thursday and Nevada on Sunday, before he begins two days of debate preparations in Denver.

Republicans in battleground states are stepping up their efforts to turn Jewish voters who are wavering on Obama into Romney supporters. Lizette Alvarez writes that Republicans hope "to erode Mr. Obama's deep-seated popularity in the Jewish community," but Democrats call that "wishful thinking."

Around the Web:
The New Yorker explores how Mormonism and private equity shaped Mr. Romney's candidacy.

Happening in Washington:

Economic reports expected Thursday include second-quarter gross domestic product, durable goods for August, and weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. Weekly mortgage rates and pending home sales index for August will be out at 10.

At 9, Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy will discuss "challenges for the euro and the future of European integration" on a conference call with the Council on Foreign Relations.



LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



765 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 27, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION


IN BRIEF


BYLINE: David Jackson; Catalina Camia


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6A


LENGTH: 438 words


Jack Nicklaus joins the tour with the Romney campaign

Golf legend Jack Nicklaus added some star power to Mitt Romney's campaign Wednesday, encouraging Ohio voters to elect the Republican as a way to restore America's greatness.

The Golden Bear, winner of 18 major championships, joined Romney's bus tour as it crisscrossed the state.

Nicklaus, one of Ohio's favorite sons, told the audience in Westerville that when he travels the world, people "want us to be like the America we were." He said Romney would bring "a real recovery" to the economy and restore America's world standing.

President Obama leads Romney by an average of about 5 percentage points in Ohio, according to seven recent statewide polls compiled by Real Clear Politics.--Catalina Camia

SENATE GOP GROUP: AKIN is better choice than Mccaskill

A day after Missouri Republican Todd Akin decided to go it alone in his Senate race, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a statement saying Akin is preferable to incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill.

Missouri is one of a handful of seats that could help determine which party has power in the Senate. The NRSC withdrew $5 million in ad funding for Akin after the congressman made controversial comments about "legitimate rape." The deadline was Tuesday for him to remove himself from the ballot. He did not.

"There is no question that for Missourians who believe we need to stop the reckless Washington spending and finally focus on growing jobs that Todd Akin is a far more preferable candidate than liberal Senator Claire McCaskill," the NRSC's Rob Jesmer said in a statement.

Akin picked up the support Wednesday of former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

--Catalina Camia

OBAMA knocks romney for ties to chinese firms

President Obama, who has announced two trade actions against the Chinese during visits to Ohio over the past three months, criticized Mitt Romney on Wednesday for investments Obama says Romney has made in Chinese companies.

Speaking at Bowling Green State University near Toledo, Obama said Romney has been "talking tough on China. It sounds better than talking about all the years he spent profiting from companies that sent our jobs to China .

"So, you know, when you hear this newfound outrage, when you see these ads he's running promising to get tough on China, it feels a lot like that fox saying, 'You know, we need more secure chicken coops.' "

Earlier in the day, Air Force One had to abort an initial landing at Toledo Express Airport because of bad weather. Obama and his party were never in danger.--David Jackson


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



766 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 27, 2012 Thursday 9:34 PM EST


George Soros gives $1 million to pro-Obama super PAC;
The billionaire, who has largely remained on the sidelines this election cycle, is is making a big donation to Priorities USA Action.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 667 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

Indiana Senate race moves to 'tossup'

Voter ID laws in all 50 states - in 1 map

Democrats' (potential) Angus King problem

Democrats fold Mitt Romney into attack ads in key congressional races

5 questions asked (and answered) on President Obama's "kitchen table" ad

A Fix call-out: The best state-based political dynasties

The fight over Elizabeth Warren's heritage, explained

Why Mitt Romney isn't going to get blown out

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Billionaire George Soros is donating $1 million to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Obama. He is also giving $500,000 to a pair of super PACs supporting congressional Democratic candidates. Soros had laid low for much of the cycle. 

* Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) was "much more ladylike" during her 2006 campaign against then-Sen. Jim Talent (R). "I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent," Akin said. "She had a confidence and was much more ladylike (in 2006), but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that's because she feels threatened."

* A new Obama campaign TV ad plays Mitt Romney's comments at a May fundraiser, where he made his now widely publicized "47 percent" comment. The ad will run in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado.

* A day after Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) endorsed Akin, his Senate Conservatives Fund political action committee officially got behind the embattled congressman's Senate bid. The group's executive director Matt Hoskins told its members: "On the question of how much you would be willing to contribute if SCF backed him, over $290,000 was pledged for Todd Akin's campaign."

* A Republican poll conducted for Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) shows him leading Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy 52 percent to 41 percent. Meanwhile, Republican-turned-independent former governor Charlie Crist is helping Murphy raise money. Crist, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, is a potential 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

 * Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday he would remain in his position if Obama is elected to a second term. "I'm in it for the long haul," Duncan said. "I'm staying, unless the president gets sick of me." 

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched a new attack ad against former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R) on the topic of Medicare. "When Tommy Thompson talks about Medicare, what's he really thinking about? The special interests; how Tommy Thompson sold his influence and connections to them, making millions. Or Thompson's plan to gut Medicare, which would cost seniors over $6,000 more a year to give more tax breaks to millionaires," the narrator of the ad says.

* Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is up with a new ad tying Obama to former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D), while Majority PAC and votevets.org are hitting Flake with a $280,000 ad buy that hits the Republican Senate nominee for voting to cut veterans' benefits. 

* The League Of Conservation Voters launched a $600,000 negative ad buy in the San Antonio market against Rep. Francisco "Quico" Canseco (R-Tex.), hitting the freshman congressman for voting "to cut investments in clean energy, like wind and solar." Canseco is opposed in Texas's 23rd District by state Rep. Pete Gallego (D). 

THE FIX MIX:

Five "heys" if you're keeping count. 

With Aaron Blake 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



767 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 27, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 98 words


Ad Watch

Ending Spending Action Fund will begin a $1.5 million buy for TV ads hitting President Obama with regretful former Obama supporters, including Democrat-turned-Republican former congressman Artur Davis. The super PAC is backed by billionaire Joe Ricketts, who plans to spend $10 million to help Mitt Romney. Ricketts came under scrutiny this year when the New York Times reported that he was considering a plan to run spots that would have tied the president to his controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

- Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



768 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 27, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


BYLINE: Ed O'Keefe


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 448 words


Republican faces a newcomer with a familiar name in Ohio

Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) is so singularly focused on reducing federal regulations that he keeps a small flag from the National Federation of Independent Business on his desk.

The pro-business group - no fan of the Obama administration - named Gibbs a "Guardian of Small Business," a distinction he proudly touts on his campaign Web site. As chairman of a House subcommittee with oversight of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, Gibbs is pushing to reduce federal regulations that he believes make it more difficult for constituents to hire new workers.

He is running in the redrawn 7th Congressional District, an area that stretches from Canton west toward Mansfield and then north to the western suburbs of Cleveland - a critical region for both Mitt Romney and President Obama if either hopes to win the state. The race is considered a "likely Republican" district in the Washington Post House race ratings, but Gibbs faces Democrat Joyce Healy-Abrams, a first-time candidate who enjoys modest name recognition because her father and brother are local politicians.

Gibbs, who made a name for himself as a successful commercial hog farmer, later served as head of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, a state assemblyman and a state senator. In 2010, he defeated Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio) as part of the national wave that swept dozens of Republicans into office.

Asked about this Congress's reputation as unpopular and unproductive, Gibbs blamed it on "the guy in the White House," who he said has not helped bring the warring sides together. "Unfortunately, this president has done the opposite - he's been the most divisive president in our history, probably. It's unbelievable."

Healy-Abrams's father, William J. Healy, was a state assemblyman, and her brother, William J. Healy II, is mayor of Canton - and she mentions their service when speaking with reporters and voters.

The race is a "Lean Republican" contest, according to the Post House race ratings, but Healy-Abrams is employing a familiar campaign message she thinks will work: that Washington is broken, her opponent is part of the problem and she can help find solutions.

"I just think my opponent has followed [House Speaker John] Boehner 97 percent of the time," she said. ". . . The hyper-partisanship is just killing the American people, and it's the wrong path."

Will the message work? She's airing ads in the costly Cleveland television market first and has support of liberal groups including Emily's List - but national Democrats expect her to come up short.

- Ed O'Keefe


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



769 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 27, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Obama has an edge in ad rates


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1189 words


As the presidential campaigns step up the pace of their multimillion-dollar spending sprees, President Obama has a little-noticed strategic advantage that gives him more control over the money he has raised.

While Mitt Romney relies heavily on massive amounts of cash held by the Republican Party and interest groups, Obama has more funds in his own campaign coffers. That allows him to make decisions about where and how to spend the money and to take better advantage of discounted ad rates, which candidates receive under federal law.

In one Ohio ad buy slated to run just before the election, for example, Obama is paying $125 for a spot that is costing a conservative super PAC $900.

The imbalance could prove crucial over the next six weeks, when the candidates and their allies are expected to burn through about $1 billion worth of advertising in battleground states and deploy thousands of staffers and volunteers to drum up votes. With $1.5 billion already spent on the White House race, the final barrage will help determine whether Romney can turn around his fortunes and defeat the incumbent.

Republicans, who have more cash overall, say they expect to dominate the airwaves through November despite Obama's advantage in ad rates and grass-roots organizing. They also say they hope to combat the president's vaunted ground game through the efforts of the Republican National Committee and independent groups.

"I think we're in a strong place message-wise with the economy still struggling, with 26 million still struggling for work and with world events looking more and more uncertain," Romney strategist Russ Schriefer said. "I'm confident that we will be able to get our message out."

Romney's White House bid is being handled largely outside his official campaign, from attack ads run by friendly super PACs to the RNC's get-out-the-vote push. The campaign is legally forbidden from coordinating with independent groups, leaving it at a potential disadvantage at a time when the candidate is trailing in the polls.

The result is that Romney and his allies may have fewer resources than it appears, since much of what they do from here will be more expensive. The lack of direct control by Romney also raises the possibility, however remote, that his allies could abandon him if his chances continue to fade, as happened to Robert J. Dole in October 1996, when the party shifted its efforts to congressional races.

"The difference in ad rates alone could end up being very important," said Michael Franz, an associate professor at Bowdoin College and a co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending. "It's a critical issue in determining how far each side's money goes. It looks to be a huge benefit for Obama in the long run."

Clashing messages

A lack of coordination may have contributed to Romney's problems in recent months: American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and other pro-Romney groups have bombarded swing states with tens of millions of dollars in ads, with little apparent effect on Obama's trajectory. And the RNC has used up nearly all of the $21.6 million it is allowed to spend under law on coordinated advertising with the Romney campaign, records show.

Most of the ads aired by Republican groups since the spring have been scattershot in location and theme, often clashing with the messages pushed by the Romney campaign. During the last week of August, for example, there were at least eight pro-Romney television commercials running in battlegrounds on topics including Medicare, welfare policy, jobs, debt and Obama's "hope and change" message from 2008.

The Obama camp, meanwhile, has drowned Ohio, Virginia and other swing states with commercials focused on defining Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat and has spread its ad purchases widely among time slots to lower costs.

During the two weeks encompassing the Republican and Democratic conventions, for example, the Obama campaign alone aired 37,230 ads - twice as many as Romney and all his allies put together, according to data from the Wesleyan group. Obama paid an average of about $526 per spot, compared with more than $700 per spot for the GOP side, the data show.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on its media strategy.

Part of the disparity stems from differing strategies, as Republicans tend to favor pricier news and sports programs for their ads while Obama chooses a more varied mix. On KUSA in Denver, Obama paid as little as $100 per spot for some recent daytime slots, while the RNC spent as much as $17,000 for a pair of commercials during a Denver Broncos preseason game, according to Federal Communications Commission records.

'Lowest unit rate'

Starting several weeks ago, both campaigns gained the ability to obtain radio and TV advertising at the "lowest unit rate," which is guaranteed to federal candidates within 60 days of an election. The legal requirement means that campaigns - but not parties, nonprofits or super PACs - can commandeer airtime at the cheapest prices.

At the start of September, Romney had about $50 million in his campaign account compared with about $90 million for Obama, who has brought in much of his money in small-dollar contributions. Romney, by contrast, has relied heavily on donors giving up to $75,000, most of which must go to the Republican Party because of legal limits on how much a donor can give to a candidate's campaign committee.

Outside groups and parties typically pay at least 50 percent more for advertising than candidates do in the final weeks of a national campaign, according to media buyers. Sometimes the gap is wider: One GOP ad buyer said a 30-second slot on "Good Morning America" in Washington will cost a candidate about $2,000, compared with twice that much for an interest group.

Federal candidates also legally receive priority over other clients, meaning they can force regular commercials aside, and they cannot be refused airtime by radio or television stations, regardless of the content.

"When everyone talks about what the media buy is, it's often very misleading," said Ken Goldstein, president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. "Not all dollars are created equal."

There have been other signs of inflated costs in the Romney operation, which fell behind the Obama campaign in fundraising last month and has significantly higher staff and consulting expenses. Romney doled out more than $200,000 in bonuses to senior staff members in August even as the campaign took out a $20 million loan to get through the month.

Republicans say they will have plenty of resources to compete, both on the air through the Romney campaign and its allies, and in voter-engagement efforts by the RNC.

"We have implemented the gold standard of ground games for this cycle, drawing on the enthusiasm for the Romney-Ryan ticket," said RNC communications director Sean Spicer. "The RNC's number one priority this cycle is to put a top-notch army on the ground that will propel us to victory."

eggend@washpost.com

T.W. Farnam and Ed O'Keefe contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



770 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 27, 2012 Thursday 4:58 PM EST


Democrats fold Mitt Romney into attack ads in key congressional races;
Democrats have sought to focus on the GOP presidential nominee in three battleground races this week.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 590 words


Democrats in blue states are beginning to use GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney more in attack ads against Republican congressional candidates. 

In the Hawaii Senate race, Rep. Mazie Hirono (D) launched a spot Wednesday that aims to tie former governor Linda Lingle (R) to Romney by pointing to remarks the GOP Senate nominee delivered at a rally last week.

The ad features a clip of Lingle saying, "You know that I personally am voting for Governor Romney for president." From there, the narrator of the ad takes a swipe at Romney's tax plan, which he says will mean "raising taxes on middle class families."

It was only a matter of time before Hirono ran an ad like this one. President Obama grew up in Hawaii, and he's expected to carry the heavily Democratic state with ease. Lingle has been pitching herself as a moderate in the campaign, and Democrats are working hard to link her to the Republican presidential ticket that is virtually certain to lose in Hawaii. 

Hirono opted to use a small part of Lingle's stump speech last week. In her remarks, Lingle also said she is not going to Washington to work for Romney or Obama, a sound bite that unsurprisingly did not make it into the Democratic attack ad.

Hirono's ad is the first Democratic TV spot across the Senate landscape directly focused on Romney. In House races, it's already been done a couple of times. On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sought to tie Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) to the Republican presidential nominee in a TV spot.

"Chris Gibson and Mitt Romney don't seem to get that everybody pays for their Medicare. They both wanted to end the Medicare guarantee to pay for even more tax breaks for the wealthy," the narrator of the ad says.

While Obama will easily carry New York, the 19th District where Gibson is running is much more of a swing area. Obama won about 53 percent of the vote there in 2008.

In Rhode Island, Rep. David Cicilline (D) is taking an approach similar to Hirono's. He released an ad that this week the begins with a clip of Republican nominee Brendan Doherty saying he thinks Romney would be "fantastic for Rhode Island."

Cicilline's district is safely Democratic at the presidential level. But the former Providence mayor finds himself in a competitive race following the city's discovery of a $110 million budget shortfall.

Obama has played a starring role in Republican attack ads against Democratic congressional candidates all cycle, and GOP campaigns will continue to put him front and center - especially in states he is not expected to win.

Romney hasn't been a regular in congressional campaign ads so far. He is coming off the toughest couple of weeks in the campaign yet, so if there is an opportune moment for congressional Democrats to begin folding him into their attack pattern, it's now.

In at least one case, a Republican used Romney to go on offense in a commercial. In Utah's 4th District race, Republican challenger Mia Love expressed her support for Romney in an ad her campaign ran as the Republican National Convention (where Love spoke) was taking place in Tampa last month.

One Senate race to keep an eye on with regard to Romney-based attacks is the state where he served as governor: Massachusetts. Obama is expected to win the Bay State comfortably, and in a debate last week, Democratic Senate nominee Elizabeth Warren began to link Sen. Scott Brown (R) to Romney. She hasn't launched a TV ad yet tying Brown to the GOP presidential nominee, but it wouldn't be surprising if she releases one soon.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



771 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 27, 2012 Thursday 4:18 PM EST


Ad watch: Obama just rolls '47 percent' tape;
New Obama ad focuses entirely on Romney's words.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 189 words


President Obama, "My Job"

What it says: The audio is taken entirely from GOP rival Mitt Romney's comments at a May fundraiser, recently posted online, about how 47 percent of the country will vote for Obama "no matter what" because they rely on the government for aid. The ad ends with the quote: "So my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." In the background of the Obama ad are shots of workers, veterans, a mother with two kids - the implication being that Romney was calling those people "victims."  

What it means: Obama's campaign is really not letting this line go (understandably, as polling shows Romney's remarks are seen negatively by a majority of Americans). It's the third OFA ad using this clip (although one of those aids aired only in Ohio). The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is launching radio ads today that include the same quote.

Who will see it: Voters in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



772 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 27, 2012 Thursday 3:49 PM EST


Ad Watch: Obama touts 'economic patriotism' in two-minute ad;
Obama lays out economic case in two-minute ad.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 82 words


President Obama, "Table"

What it says: "It's time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class."

What it means: Obama is making his case directly to the people, just as Mitt Romney did Tuesday in a 60-second ad. Both ads focus on the economic choice this November.

Who will see it: Voters in New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



773 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 27, 2012 Thursday 3:49 PM EST


Ad watch: Romney uses '08 Obama coal comment against him;
"[I]t's Barack Obama who said, 'So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it'll bankrupt them.'"


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 108 words


Mitt Romney, "Bankrupt"

What it says: "[I]t's Barack Obama who said, 'So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it'll bankrupt them.'"

What it means: Mitt Romney is responding to an Obama ad that claims the Republican candidate is the one who hates coal, part of an ongoing back-and-forth over which candidate supports coal more. Romney's ad quotes Obama (as a presidential candidate in 2008) saying he supported legislation that would bankrupt new coal-fired plants.  

Who will see it: No word on the size of the buy, but presumably Ohio and Virginia coal country. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



774 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 91 words


Ad Watch

Ending Spending Action Fund will begin a $1.5 million buy for TV ads hitting President Obama with regretful former Obama supporters, including Democrat-turned-Republican former congressman Artur Davis. The super PAC is backed by billionaire Joe Ricketts, who plans to spend $10 million to help Mitt Romney. Ricketts came under scrutiny this year when the New York Times reported that he was considering a plan to run spots that would have tied the president to his controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

- Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



775 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


BYLINE: - Ed O'Keefe


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 438 words


Republican faces a newcomer with a familiar name in Ohio

Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) is so singularly focused on reducing federal regulations that he keeps a small flag from the National Federation of Independent Business on his desk.

The pro-business group - no fan of the Obama administration - named Gibbs a "Guardian of Small Business," a distinction he proudly touts on his campaign Web site. As chairman of a House subcommittee with oversight of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, Gibbs is pushing to reduce federal regulations that he believes make it more difficult for constituents to hire new workers.

He is running in the redrawn 7th Congressional District, an area that stretches from Canton west toward Mansfield and then north to the western suburbs of Cleveland - a critical region for both Mitt Romney and President Obama if either hopes to win the state. The race is considered a "likely Republican" district in the Washington Post House race ratings, but Gibbs faces Democrat Joyce Healy-Abrams, a first-time candidate who enjoys modest name recognition because her father and brother are local politicians.

Gibbs, who made a name for himself as a successful commercial hog farmer, later served as head of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, a state assemblyman and a state senator. In 2010, he defeated Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio) as part of the national wave that swept dozens of Republicans into office.

Asked about this Congress's reputation as unpopular and unproductive, Gibbs blamed it on "the guy in the White House," who he said has not helped bring the warring sides together. "Unfortunately, this president has done the opposite - he's been the most divisive president in our history, probably. It's unbelievable."

Healy-Abrams's father, William J. Healy, was a state assemblyman, and her brother, William J. Healy II, is mayor of Canton - and she mentions their service when speaking with reporters and voters.

The race is a "Lean Republican" contest, according to the Post House race ratings, but Healy-Abrams is employing a familiar campaign message she thinks will work: that Washington is broken, her opponent is part of the problem and she can help find solutions.

"I just think my opponent has followed [House Speaker John] Boehner 97 percent of the time," she said. ". . . The hyper-partisanship is just killing the American people, and it's the wrong path."

Will the message work? She's airing ads in the costly Cleveland television market first and has support of liberal groups including Emily's List - but national Democrats expect her to come up short.

- Ed O'Keefe


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



776 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 27, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition


Obama has an edge in ad rates


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1182 words


As the presidential campaigns step up the pace of their multimillion-dollar spending sprees, President Obama has a little-noticed strategic advantage that gives him more control over the money he has raised.

While Mitt Romney relies heavily on massive amounts of cash held by the Republican Party and interest groups, Obama has more funds in his own campaign coffers. That allows him to make decisions about where and how to spend the money and to take better advantage of discounted ad rates, which candidates receive under federal law.

In one Ohio ad buy slated to run just before the election, for example, Obama is paying $125 for a spot that is costing a conservative super PAC $900.

The imbalance could prove crucial over the next six weeks, when the candidates and their allies are expected to burn through about $1 billion worth of advertising in battleground states and deploy thousands of staffers and volunteers to drum up votes. With $1.5 billion already spent on the White House race, the final barrage will help determine whether Romney can turn around his fortunes and defeat the incumbent.

Republicans, who have more cash overall, say they expect to dominate the airwaves through November despite Obama's advantage in ad rates and grass-roots organizing. They also say they hope to combat the president's vaunted ground game through the efforts of the Republican National Committee and independent groups.

"I think we're in a strong place message-wise with the economy still struggling, with 26 million still struggling for work and with world events looking more and more uncertain," Romney strategist Russ Schriefer said. "I'm confident that we will be able to get our message out."

Romney's White House bid is being handled largely outside his official campaign, from attack ads run by friendly super PACs to the RNC's get-out-the-vote push. The campaign is legally forbidden from coordinating with independent groups, leaving it at a potential disadvantage at a time when the candidate is trailing in the polls.

The result is that Romney and his allies may have fewer resources than it appears, since much of what they do from here will be more expensive. The lack of direct control by Romney also raises the possibility, however remote, that his allies could abandon him if his chances continue to fade, as happened to Robert J. Dole in October 1996, when the party shifted its efforts to congressional races.

"The difference in ad rates alone could end up being very important," said Michael Franz, an associate professor at Bowdoin College and a co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending. "It's a critical issue in determining how far each side's money goes. It looks to be a huge benefit for Obama in the long run."

Clashing messages

A lack of coordination may have contributed to Romney's problems in recent months: American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and other pro-Romney groups have bombarded swing states with tens of millions of dollars in ads, with little apparent effect on Obama's trajectory. And the RNC has used up nearly all of the $21.6 million it is allowed to spend under law on coordinated advertising with the Romney campaign, records show.

Most of the ads aired by Republican groups since the spring have been scattershot in location and theme, often clashing with the messages pushed by the Romney campaign. During the last week of August, for example, there were at least eight pro-Romney television commercials running in battlegrounds on topics including Medicare, welfare policy, jobs, debt and Obama's "hope and change" message from 2008.

The Obama camp, meanwhile, has drowned Ohio, Virginia and other swing states with commercials focused on defining Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat and has spread its ad purchases widely among time slots to lower costs.

During the two weeks encompassing the Republican and Democratic conventions, for example, the Obama campaign alone aired 37,230 ads - twice as many as Romney and all his allies put together, according to data from the Wesleyan group. Obama paid an average of about $526 per spot, compared with more than $700 per spot for the GOP side, the data show.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on its media strategy.

Part of the disparity stems from differing strategies, as Republicans tend to favor pricier news and sports programs for their ads while Obama chooses a more varied mix. On KUSA in Denver, Obama paid as little as $100 per spot for some recent daytime slots, while the RNC spent as much as $17,000 for a pair of commercials during a Denver Broncos preseason game, according to Federal Communications Commission records.

'Lowest unit rate'

Starting several weeks ago, both campaigns gained the ability to obtain radio and TV advertising at the "lowest unit rate," which is guaranteed to federal candidates within 60 days of an election. The legal requirement means that campaigns - but not parties, nonprofits or super PACs - can commandeer airtime at the cheapest prices.

At the start of September, Romney had about $50 million in his campaign account compared with about $90 million for Obama, who has brought in much of his money in small-dollar contributions. Romney, by contrast, has relied heavily on donors giving up to $75,000, most of which must go to the Republican Party because of legal limits on how much a donor can give to a candidate's campaign committee.

Outside groups and parties typically pay at least 50 percent more for advertising than candidates do in the final weeks of a national campaign, according to media buyers. Sometimes the gap is wider: One GOP ad buyer said a 30-second slot on "Good Morning America" in Washington will cost a candidate about $2,000, compared with twice that much for an interest group.

Federal candidates also legally receive priority over other clients, meaning they can force regular commercials aside, and they cannot be refused airtime by radio or television stations, regardless of the content.

"When everyone talks about what the media buy is, it's often very misleading," said Ken Goldstein, president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. "Not all dollars are created equal."

There have been other signs of inflated costs in the Romney operation, which fell behind the Obama campaign in fundraising last month and has significantly higher staff and consulting expenses. Romney doled out more than $200,000 in bonuses to senior staff members in August even as the campaign took out a $20 million loan to get through the month.

Republicans say they will have plenty of resources to compete, both on the air through the Romney campaign and its allies, and in voter-engagement efforts by the RNC.

"We have implemented the gold standard of ground games for this cycle, drawing on the enthusiasm for the Romney-Ryan ticket," said RNC communications director Sean Spicer. "The RNC's number one priority this cycle is to put a top-notch army on the ground that will propel us to victory."

eggend@washpost.com

T.W. Farnam and Ed O'Keefe contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



777 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 26, 2012 Wednesday


Romney Makes Direct Claim of Compassion as '47 Percent' Drives Ads


BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 326 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney talks directly to the camera for nearly a minute to say that while both sides care about working families, only his plan will help. It directly contradicts an earlier Obama spot.



Mitt Romney's "47 percent" remarks are continuing to drive ad messages on both sides in the presidential race.

Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, has an unusual new ad out on Wednesday morning, "Too Many Americans," in which he speaks directly to the camera for nearly a minute, employing a new, intimate style and empathetic language.

Mr. Romney repeatedly uses the word "compassion," as some conservatives have proposed he do. Their argument: that Mr. Romney's remarks about those receiving government assistance undercuts the Republican Party's claim to a compassionate conservatism that helped George W. Bush win the White House and could hold the key to Mr. Romney's electoral success.

"President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families," Mr. Romney says. "The difference is my policies will make things better for them."

Mr. Romney adds, "We should measure compassion by how many people are able to get off welfare and get a good paying job," contending that his plan will create 12 million new jobs.

The Romney spot directly contradicts an Obama ad released Tuesday afternoon.

As the now famous footage of Mr. Romney at a Florida fund-raiser plays on the screen, an announcer says, "When Mitt Romney dismissed 47 percent of Americans for not pulling their weight, he attacked millions of hard working people making 25-, 35-, 45 thousand dollars a year."

The 30-second spot then pivots to Mr. Romney's own taxes, noting that he paid "just 14 percent in taxes last year," mostly on investment income.

"Instead of attacking folks who work for a living, shouldn't we stand up for them?" the narrator concludes. "Fair Share" is running in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia.

Mr. Romney's campaign typically does not release information about where its ads are running, but Mr. Romney will be in Ohio Wednesday, as will President Obama. So it is a fair bet that the ad will at least be there, too.


LOAD-DATE: September 26, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



778 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 26, 2012 Wednesday
First EDITION


GOD vs. GOP;
Christianity doesn't always fuel Republican politics. In fact, sometimes religious conservatives base their views on factors other than the Bible.


BYLINE: Tom Krattenmaker


SECTION: EDIT; Pg. 8A


LENGTH: 847 words


As if we harbored any last doubts, we now have statistical evidence of a truth that's seems more obvious by the year. "God" appears 12 times in the Republican platform this election season and just once in the Democrats'.

Couple this with the rhetoric of the candidates and GOP enthusiasts, and it seems clearer than ever that Republicans, the party of tax cuts for the wealthy and up-by-your-own-bootstraps regard for the poor, is the God party, the Christian party, in American politics.

If you're like me, you have often puzzled over the combination of Christianity and hard-edged conservative politics and, like many progressives, you've probably asked how a religion of love, compassion and selflessness could lead to the positions and tactics that seem so at odds with what we think about Jesus.

Allow me to answer the question -- by rejecting its premise.

Consider the very real possibility that Christianity is not what fuels Republican politics but rather that the two co-exist in today's conservative movement, as they do in the hearts and minds of its members.

Not to say that GOP positions are untethered from Christian ideas and teachings. You'll invariably find religious conservatives citing chapter and verse in their justifications for policy stands against gay marriage, for instance, or for keeping government hands off our wallets and religious practices.

But as surveys reveal, when it comes to some of the most contentious political issues of recent years -- torture, for example, or the kind of safety net the country will provide for our poorest citizens -- Christian Republicans tend to base their politics on factors other than the Bible.

Non-religious beliefs

A 2010 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found just 12% of white evangelicals indicating that their religious beliefs have a major influence on their views on immigration policy. Similarly, just 13% say the same thing about their views about government aid to the poor.

Other polls find that white evangelicals are more likely than other demographic groups to support the use of torture on terrorist suspects.

As progressive Christian author Greg Garrett writes, "We tend to make political -- and other -- decisions not out of Christianity's highest values like compassion, generosity and responsibility, but out of secular American values like self-reliance, self-interest and acquisition."

For secularists with a grudge against Christians, it's easy to play the "hypocrite" card here. Aren't the surveys confirming that the Christianity we see in conservative politics is only for show?

There's a show element, for sure. But to say it's only that is to grossly oversimplify the complex mix of beliefs, ideas and identities that go into the political dynamics we see on the campaign trails.

On the problem of poverty, for instance, progressives may sneer that Christian conservatives are clueless or engaging in mere lip service when they explain their favored solutions: charity, churches, a growing economy. But to charge them with having a cold, unchristian heart is to sling opinion, not fact.

Natural reactions

When you think about it, what's remarkable about conservative Christians' political behavior is how unremarkable it is. Whether we are liberal or conservative, secular or religious, those of us who always act out of high principle can cast the first stone. (To state the obvious, liberals can be disappointingly human in their own ways. More times than I can count, I have seen white progressives say all the right things about racial justice but seem to forget their commitment when the opportunity comes to take inconvenient action.)

Hypocrites? The fairer, more accurate label is "human."

But here's the catch. When Christian Republicans carry on as though their political positions are automatically superior, somehow imbued with divine approval and above reproach or argument -- when they act as though you're against God if you're against them -- they make a poor case for their politics and their faith.

The election season furnishes no shortage of examples. Consider the anti-Obama ad hatched by the political action committee associated with Christian conservative Gary Bauer that has been running in North Carolina. A fictional husband and wife wax indignant over the way the president is "forcing" gay marriage on the country. The solution? Choose the ticket "with values," the husband declares as the words "Vote Romney/Ryan" flash on the screen -- as if to say that President Obama and his supporters have no values or, as Christian conservatives often charge, are snubbing their nose at God.

If benefit of the doubt is to be given, this kind of pious haughtiness simply won't fly. And if pious partisans want to speak more convincingly to the unconvinced and show what's compelling about Jesus and the GOP, they'll get a better hearing if they dismount from their high horses and come down to where the rest of us humans live.

Tom Krattenmaker is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of The Evangelicals You Don't Know, to be released this spring.


LOAD-DATE: September 26, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



779 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 9:49 PM EST


Pro-Romney super PAC launches ads with former Obama supporters;
A super PAC funded by a billionaire who has pledged to spend $10 million to help Romney launches a new ad buy.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 728 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

The 2012 cash dash - in 3 graphics

National Republicans reopen door to spending money on Akin

Pennsylvania Senate race moves to 'lean Democratic'

Paul Ryan: Base hero? Swing voter magnet? Both?

Who will abandon Obama and Romney on Election Day?

What Bill Clinton has done for Barack Obama

Jim DeMint endorses Todd Akin, setting up unlikely alliance

How the presidential campaigns are spending money, in one chart

Poll shows Florida joining Obama's swing state surge

Republicans are losing ground up and down the ballot. But why?

Most are negative about Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Ending Spending Action Fund will begin a $1.5 million buy for TV ads hitting President Obama with regretful former Obama supporters, including Democrat-turned-Republican former congressman Artur Davis. The super PAC is backed by billionaire Joe Ricketts, who plans to spend $10 million to help Mitt Romney. He also came under scrutiny this year when the New York Times reported that he was considering a plan to run spots that would have tied the president to his controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. 

* The pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is launching new ad buys in Michigan and Wisconsin at a cost of about $1 million in each state. The new commercial says "the real unemployment rate is 19 percent."

* A new poll conducted for former surgeon general Richard Carmona's (D) Arizona Senate campaign shows the Democrat running about even with Rep. Jeff Flake (R). Flake is at 44 percent and Carmona is at 43 percent in the Anzalone Liszt survey. 

* The Republican nonprofit group Crossroads GPS launched a $1.2 million buy in Wisconsin for a TV spot that says Rep. Tammy Baldwin's (D-Wis.) "tax and spend agenda is just too extreme for Wisconsin."

* Early voting in Ohio is on pace to surpass 2008 levels. Already, 10 percent of registered voters have submitted applications for absentee ballots. In 2008, about 30 percent of Ohio voters cast mail ballots or voted early in person. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Maine Republican Senate nominee Charlie Summers released a new biographical TV ad in which he says he hopes that when Mainers look at him, "they will see a little bit of themselves, and they'll note they will always have someone to fight for them." Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has extended its ad buy for another week. The committee is running a spot criticizing independent former governor Angus King, the front-runner in the three-way race. 

* A poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosener for the New Hampshire Democratic Party shows Obama leading Romney 52 percent to 45 percent in the Granite State. The survey also shows Democratic gubernatorial nominee Maggie Hassan running about even with Republican nominee Ovide Lamontagne. Hassan is at 48 percent while Lamontagne is at 46 percent in the poll. 

* Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) will headline the Iowa Republican Party's Oct. 20 Ronald Reagan Dinner. 

 * A Republican poll conducted for Utah congressional candidate Mia Love's campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee shows her leading Rep. Jim Matheson (D) 51 percent to 36 percent, a sharp turnabout from a July poll that showed Matheson at 51 percent. It's worth noting that the latest poll is more than two weeks old, having been conducted Sept. 10 and 11. 

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a new TV ad in the Montana Senate race hitting Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R) over a speech last fall in which he called lobbying "an honorable profession."

* Former Virginia senator George Allen's (R) latest TV ad features a woman whose son was killed in Iraq. She says she received a personal note of support from Allen. "What made it different was a handwritten note, parent to parent," the woman says. 

THE FIX MIX:

Everyone, together now ... 

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



780 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 9:26 PM EST


Republicans are losing ground up and down the ballot. But why?;
GOPers admit they have lost ground of late. Explanations vary as to the "why".


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1090 words


Ask Democratic strategists when they want the election to happen and they'll uniformly say "today." Ask any Republican strategists the same question and they'll acknowledge they're glad they have until Nov. 6 to make their case to voters.

What veteran consultants and party professionals - on both sides - agree on is that the landscape has shifted - subtly but still shifted - toward Democrats in the past few weeks. It's movement that has been most well documented on the presidential level but, in conversations with people paying close attention to Senate and House races, is also happening downballot.

The slippage, Republicans are quick to note, is far less in their own private data than in some public polling; they have lost one to three points in most places, one GOP source noted, but not five to seven (or more) as some public data have shown.

While there's widespread agreement among pro-Democratic (or anti-Republican) strategists, there's far less uniformity when it comes to the "why" behind it.

Among the reasons proposed to us by Republicans:

* The Democratic convention bounce has lingered well into September, with the framing that former President Clinton put on the race in his convention speech working against the GOP. Clinton, in a way Obama has not/can not, was able to set the stakes of the election and the choice before voters - particularly wavering Democrats - in a powerful and very high-profile speech that continues to resonate.

* There's been a jolt of optimism in the country of late, most markedly in an improving "right track" number in most state and national polls. While more people still say the country is headed in the wrong direction, the differential is not so lopsided as it's been in past months. Moving hand in hand with that increased optimism is the number of people who say they approve of Obama's performance on the economy.

* Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's campaign has struggled to push its preferred message - Obama is mishandling the economy and it's time for a change - for at least the last two weeks. "When was last time Obama was on defense?," asked one experienced GOP strategist closely monitoring downballot contests. "The 'it's not about me, it's about you' strategy only works if your opponent is continually taking on water and you're not."

What no one knows is whether this is a temporary bump for Obama - and downballot Democrats - or whether this is the new normal. Much depends on the economy - or, more accurately, people's perceptions of the economy.  

To that end, Republicans have next Wednesday and Friday circled on their calendars. On Wednesday, Obama and Romney debate for the first time. On Friday, the September jobs report comes out. Both of those events will draw lots and lots of eyeballs. And any time lots of people are paying attention, there's a chance that the dynamic of the race can shift.

Romney goes direct-to-camera: The Romney campaign is launching a new ad in which their candidate speaks directly to the camera for 60 seconds about the economic problems facing the country.

"President Obama and I both care about poor and middle class families," Romney says in the ad. "The difference is, my policies will make things better for them. We shouldn't measure compassion by how many people are on Welfare. We should measure compassion by how many people are able to get off Welfare and get a good-paying job."

Romney also recites stats about the number of Americans in poverty and on food stamps, and he says his plan will create 12 million jobs. He closes by saying "we can't afford another four years like the last four years."

McCaskill ad takes on 'legitimate rape': The official deadline for Rep. Todd Akin (R) to drop out of the Missouri Senate race passed on Tuesday, and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wasted no time in launching her first attack ad on his "legitimate rape" comments.

McCaskill has largely held her fire in the month-plus since Akin made the comment, apparently not wanting to push him out of the race. Now, all bets are off.

The ad re-hashes a bunch of Akin's more controversial comments, but closes by saying that he believes that "only some rapes are legitimate."

This is the dagger stage of the race. Democrats are going to start hitting Akin hard in hopes of ending the race early and preventing him from repairing his image.

In the meantime, Akin appears as though he'll get the help of an unlikely backer: Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) Senate Conservatives Fund. Akin, a former unapologetic earmarker, has in recent days embraced an earmark ban, which DeMint's group supports.

DeMint's group is polling its supporters on whether the group should back Akin, but it appears likely. National Republicans, meanwhile, have sworn off Akin and said they won't spend money on him.

Fixbits:

A new Bloomberg poll shows Obama leading nationally among likely voters, 49 percent to 43 percent.

Romney starts lowering his own debate expectations.

Romney appeared to contradict his past statements on Tuesday, saying that Obama has not, in fact, raised taxes in his first four years as president.

Romney and Paul Ryan will start campaigning together more often.

Romney says teachers unions shouldn't be making political contributions. The unions are heavy contributors to the Democratic party.

Even Rasmussen shows Obama gaining an edge nationally, 47 percent to 44 percent.

The Romney campaign says the Obama team is "spiking the football" too early.

Trust in government reaches a three-year high on domestic issues and a nine-year high on foreign policy issues.

National Democrats are up with a new ad hitting former Virginia senator George Allen (R-Va.) on Social Security privatization.

Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) lashes out at his local newspaper's editorial board over its treatment of his ethics problems. 

An internal poll conducted for Republican Keith Rothfus's (R) campaign shows him tied with Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) at 38 percent.

National Democrats have canceled a week in ad reservations against Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) but note that a Democratic super PAC is already up with a $1 million buy against him.

Must-reads:

"Early voting puts Iowa back in the spotlight" - Scott Conroy, Real Clear Politics

"Obamas discuss daughters' growth" - Krissah Thompson, Washington Post

"Romney calls for foreign aid overhaul at Clinton Global Initiative event" - Philip Rucker and Scott Wilson, Washington Post

"One Coalition Stays True to Todd Akin" - John Eligon, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



781 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


Suddenly, the president's briefings are showing


BYLINE: Al Kamen


SECTION: A section; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 858 words


Let it not be said that columnists don't have clout.

Take, for example, Washington Post op-ed columnist Marc Thiessen's Sept. 10 piece saying President Obamahas failed to attend his daily intelligence briefing "more than half the time."

Thiessen's column was based on numbers from the Government Accountability Institute, which he described as a "new conservative investigative research organization." (It's now being called a "nonpartisan" research group.)

The GAI was founded by Peter Schweizer, an author who consulted for the George W. BushWhite House's speechwriting operation. (Thiessen and Schweizer also founded a business called Oval Office Writers in 2009.)

Schweizer, the only person listed on the GAI Web site as being on the GAI "team," used Politico's White House calendar - as opposed to the skimpy official White House schedule - to calculate Obama's briefing attendance.

Our colleague Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post's Fact Checker, debunked the GAI analysis as meaningless, given that different presidents have different ways of getting briefed on intelligence matters - some prefer just to read the Presidential Daily Brief, some prefer just meeting with their national security adviser, and so on. He gave the claim three Pinocchios (out of a possible four). Thiessen disagrees.

Then Karl Rove's Operation Crossroads super PAC picked up on the analysis when it blistered Obama in an ad for his supposed inattentiveness to foreign policy and cited Thiessen's Post column.

Next thing you know, as Kessler points out to us, the White House schedule started looking a little different. On Sept. 14 (four days after Thiessen's column) and every workday since, through Monday, it listed Obama - and sometimes Vice President Biden- as being briefed.

Asked about that recent uptick in Obama's "attendance, " White House spokesman Tommy Vietorsaid Tuesday afternoon: "As we've said countless times, the president reads the PDB every day and most days he's in D.C. has an Oval [Office] session." Vietor added that the scheduling had "nothing to do" with Thiessen's column.

Well, okay.

Calling all eggheads

In the ever-uglier Senate race in Massachusetts, Republican incumbent Scott Brownhas tried to make proletarian hay out of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren's academic background.

He calls her "Professor Warren." Subtext: See! She's one of those ivory-tower elitists! And he has bashed her Harvard salary. ("How very uppah-crust!" the truck-driving Bruins fan seems to be crowing.)

Warren, though, isn't running away from her smarty-pants rep. In fact, she's doubling down with a fundraiser Wednesday night outside Boston daring folks to match their brains against her crack staffers in a trivia battle royal.

"Come Test Your Wits against Elizabeth Warren's Policy Team" the invite taunts. Luckily, the prices are such that even a public-school grad might afford them: $20 for an individual and $100 for a team.

Would-be attendees should hope the categories don't include topics of particular Warren expertise, such as "The Fine Print of the Bankruptcy Law" - or "Scott Brown's Voting Record. "

Cut out the middleman

Fluency in bureaucratic-speak is harder than it looks.

The Senate voted Friday to boost Jim Syring's military rank, a prerequisite for his taking the position of director of the Missile Defense Agency, the job the president selected him for last month. And we assumed the Senate still hadn't confirmed him for the job, since the Congressional Record notice about the vote included nary a mention of the missile agency or the title Syring is to hold there. The Loop reported that he'd gotten "half a loaf" by getting the necessary boost in rank but not the job itself.

Alas, we underestimated the import of the phrase that followed the announcement of his promotion: "while assigned to a position of importance and responsibility." Turns out, those innocuous little words mean big things for Syring - namely, that the promotion to vice admiral means that he's now eligible for the military to hand him over the keys to the MDA - just as the president directed - with no further approval from the Senate needed.

Couldn't have been any clearer, right?

Still, questions remain. Like when will Syring actually take over as head of MDA?

Still no word. That's as clear as . . . federal code.

Oh, thank heaven

Anyone strolling into the7-Eleven in Foggy Bottom on Tuesday evening in search of a caffeine fix may have thought the store was showing support for Mitt Romney. There were disposable coffee cups emblazoned with the Republican presidential candidate's name but no similar offerings featuring the incumbent.

A Loop fan and coffee swiller noticed the seemingly partisan selection and asked the manager about it. Turns out he ran out of Obama cups earlier in the day. More tomorrow, he promised.

Which figures, since the convenience store is a mere Slurpee's throw from State Department headquarters, where we can assume few employees would want to be seen toting Romney gear.

With Emily Heil

kamena@washpost.com

The blog: washingtonpost.com/intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.


LOAD-DATE: September 26, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



782 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 7:00 PM EST


Pennsylvania Senate race moves to 'lean Democratic';
Republican nominee Tom Smith's momentum and ad spending have tightened a race that once looked very one-sided.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 552 words


Even as President Obama has solidified his lead in recent months over Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania, Republican Senate nominee Tom Smith has been inching closer to Sen. Robert Casey (D).

Smith, a self-funding former Democrat who emerged from the a crowded primary field in April, has outspent Casey on the airwaves during the general election, and polling shows he stands within striking distance of the first-term Democrat with under six weeks to go until election day.

As a result of this narrowing, we are moving the Pennsylvania Senate race from "solid Democratic" to "lean Democratic" on our 2012 Senate map. The shift reflects movement toward the Republican side and suggests the race is firmly in play.

(On the map below, the yellow states are "tossup" races, the light blue and red ones are "lean" Democratic and Republican contests, and the dark blue and red states are "solid" Democratic and Republican races.) 

To be clear: Casey is still the clear frontrunner here. The Casey name is well known (and liked) in Pennsylvania, and the senator has plenty of money to spend. And with Obama looking strong in the state, Smith would likely have to run 10 points (if not more) ahead of Romney to win. That's no small feat.

That said, recent metrics suggest positive movement for Smith. A Qunnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll released Wednesday showed Casey leading Smith 49 percent 43 percent, a drop from the Democrat's 55 percent to 37 percent lead in late July. A Pittsburgh Tribune-Review poll released Tuesday also showed a competitive race with Casey leading Smith 46 percent to 41 percent.

Other polls show Casey holding a wider lead. A Franklin and Marshall College poll released Wednesday showed Casey leading Smith 48 percent to 38 percent. A recent Allentown Morning Call/Muhlenberg poll showed Casey leading by 12 points, which was a drop from his previous lead of 19 points in the survey.

It's clear that at this point, Pennsylvania more closely resembles Senate races The Fix has included in its "lean Democratic" category, including Ohio, Florida, and Michigan, than races in the "solid Democratic" group, like West Virginia, New York and Vermont.

Casey campaign manager Larry Smar told The Fix that the campaign expected the race to tighten from that 18-point spread it was at earlier this summer. He also pointed to the lopsided spending battle since the end of the primary. Smith has recently been on the air unopposed in the Philadelphia media market, and overall, been outspending Casey by a margin of about 3-1 since the last Quinnipiac poll was taken.

Casey has already gone up with attack ads against Smith, including a recent spot that hits the Republican for saying he started a tea party group. Look for Democrats to continue trying to cast Smith as too conservative for the state.

Smith's campaign says it has been focused on disproving the notion that Casey is a moderate. A recent campaign ad casts Casey as a tax-raiser and hits him for voting for Obama's health care law.

At this point, Pennsylvania is not among the closest Senate races across the country. But it's well worth keeping an eye on. If it catches the attention of the national senatorial committees enough to spur the groups to spend money on ads down the stretch, it will be a sign the race has tightened even more.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



783 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 3:39 PM EST


Washington Post poll: Brown leads Mandel in Ohio Senate race;
The first-term Democrat leads his Republican opponent with six weeks left until Election Day.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 680 words


Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) holds a substantial lead over Republican challenger Josh Mandel with six weeks left until Election Day, according to a new Washington Post poll released Tuesday, giving Democrats some breathing room in a race where outside groups have put nearly $20 million toward defeating the incumbent.

Brown leads Mandel 53 percent to 41 percent among likely Ohio voters. Among registered Ohio voters, Mandel - the state treasurer - trails Brown 51 percent to 39 percent.

Brown's level of support is nearly identical to President Obama's. But Mandel's is a tick lower than Mitt Romney's. Among likely Ohio voters, Obama leads Mitt Romney 52 percent to 44 percent. Among registered voters, Obama enjoys a slightly wider 52 percent to 41 percent lead over Romney. The poll shows voters are less certain about their Senate choice than they are about their presidential preference.

Mandel runs behind Romney in a few key respects. Mandel earns the support of 85 percent of Republicans, compared to 91 percent for Romney. He is viewed favorably by 76 percent of all Republican voters, compared to 90 percent who hold a favorable opinion of the GOP presidential nominee. Mandel claims the support of 54 percent of  white evangelical Christians who are likely to vote - a subset of the electorate that generally favors Republicans - a shade lower than 63 percent who support Romney.

Mandel, an Iraq War veteran, was regarded as a top Republican recruit last year, as he moved toward officially declaring his bid against Brown. He caught the attention of national strategists after he was elected treasurer by a wide margin in 2010. The youthful looking 34-year-old has been a prolific fundraiser; even outpacing Brown 's quarterly hauls at times.

But the Republican has also absorbed some blows to his image. A March trip to the Bahamas for a fundraiser and speech to payday lending industry leaders earned him some unflattering headlines and became fodder for Democratic attacks. His decision to hire young and inexperienced staffers from his 2010 campaign for high-ranking positions in the treasurer's office was another distraction. Democrats have also sought to cast Mandel as an absentee treasurer who hasn't been attending to his official duties.

Still, Mandel remains standing against Brown, thanks in no small part to Republican outside groups, which have dropped over $19 million on the race. Crossroads GPS, the powerful nonprofit group tied to Republican operative Karl Rove, released the latest ad Tuesday morning. The spot ties Brown to Obama, a tactic Republicans have often used in attack ads against the senator.

While Mandel's standing among Republicans leaves room for improvement, he is keeping pace with Brown among independents. Mandel claims the support of 43 percent of unaffiliated voters to the Democrat's 46 percent.

Likely voters are split when it comes to their opinion of Mandel, with 42 percent having a favorable opinion of him and 45 percent holding an unfavorable view of the treasurer. Fully 49 percent of likely voters percent say they hold a favorable view of Brown, while 40 percent give unfavorable ratings to him. Both candidates are unknown to a significant portion of Ohio voters, with 11 percent saying they have no opinion of Brown and 13 percent saying they have no opinion of Mandel. By contrast, only 2 percent of Ohio likely voters are unsure about Romney, 1 percent Obama.

Other recent polls have shown Brown leading, including a Columbus Dispatch/Ohio Newspaper organization survey conducted earlier this month. In that survey, Brown led Mandel 52 percent to 45 percent. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed Brown leading Mandel 49 percent to 42 percent.

The Washington Post poll of Ohio was conducted from Sept. 19-23. Among the sample of 934 registered voters, the margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Among the sample of 759 likely voters, the margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Click here for interactive poll results as well as a exact question wording and poll methodology.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



784 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 2:28 PM EST


Ad Watch: Romney reaches out to everyone as '47 percent' comments linger;
The Romney campaign needs to change the topic after the 47 percent issue.


BYLINE: Natalie Jennings


LENGTH: 97 words


Mitt Romney campaign, "Too Many Americans" 

What it says: "President Obama and I both care about poor and middle class families. The difference is my policies will make things better for them." 

What it means: The "47 percent" comments could be taking a toll on Mitt Romney's candidacy, and the Obama campaign is keeping them fresh on the minds of voters in its own ads. This ad is Romney's attempt to address the voters who might have felt slighted by his remarks. 

Who will see it: The campaign did not say where it will air.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



785 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 26, 2012 Wednesday 1:43 PM EST


How the presidential campaigns are spending money, in one chart;
The presidential campaigns and top allied groups have spent nearly $600 million on advertising and mail.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 408 words


Fundraising receives a great deal of attention in politics. But looking at how campaigns and outside groups decide to spend money can be just as revealing. 

If it seems as if various organizations are bringing in and shelling out eye-popping heaps of cash in the presidential election, it's because that's exactly what's happening. As The Washington Post's 2012 Presidential Campaign Finance Explorer shows, President Obama and his allies (including the national Democratic party, a joint fundraising committee, and super PACs) have raised $775 million and spent $606 million. Mitt Romney and his allies have raised even more ($784 million) and spent $534 million.  

So where is the money going? Much of it has gone toward advertising, including television and radio spots. TV advertising remains one of the most effective means of mass communication with voters. It's also very expensive. Running a single ad can cost millions of dollars in the biggest media markets. 

Both Republicans and Democrats have dedicated more to advertising than any other type of expense. Obama and his allies have spent roughly $121 million more on advertising than the GOP side, about $266 million to Republicans' $145 million, as the chart above shows. 

Interestingly, Romney and his allies have dedicated about $29 million more to mail than Obama's side, dishing out nearly $100 million. Direct mail is a much more targeted medium that leaves room for tailoring messages to specific parts of the electorate.

When it comes to payroll and administrative costs, Obama and his allies are outspending the Romney side, suggesting that in terms of staffing and other operational expenses, Republicans may be running a leaner operation. That said, the GOP side has been spending more on consultants. 

Ann Marie Habershaw, the Obama campaign's chief operating officer, represents the payroll top expenditure on the Democratic side, while the GOP side's top payroll expense has been Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

The data also show that it's true you have to spend money to make money in politics. Both sides have spent about $70 million on fundraising.

One more notable observation: Obama's side is outspending Romney and his allies more than 2-1 on polling. 

Check out the complete Campaign Finance Explorer here, where you'll also find a complete list of the groups that were included in the spending tally, as well as more details about specific expenditures. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



786 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 26, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition


Suddenly, the president's briefings are showing


BYLINE: Al Kamen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A17


LENGTH: 849 words


Let it not be said that columnists don't have clout.

Take, for example, Washington Post op-ed columnist Marc Thiessen's Sept. 10 piece saying President Obama has failed to attend his daily intelligence briefing "more than half the time."

Thiessen's column was based on numbers from the Government Accountability Institute, which he described as a "new conservative investigative research organization." (It's now being called a "nonpartisan" research group.)

The GAI was founded by Peter Schweizer, an author who consulted for the George W. Bush White House's speechwriting operation. (Thiessen and Schweizer also founded a business called Oval Office Writers in 2009.)

Schweizer, the only person listed on the GAI Web site as being on the GAI "team," used Politico's White House calendar - as opposed to the skimpy official White House schedule - to calculate Obama's briefing attendance.

Our colleague Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post's Fact Checker, debunked the GAI analysis as meaningless, given that different presidents have different ways of getting briefed on intelligence matters - some prefer just to read the Presidential Daily Brief, some prefer just meeting with their national security adviser, and so on. He gave the claim three Pinocchios (out of a possible four). Thiessen disagrees.

Then Karl Rove's Operation Crossroads super PAC picked up on the analysis when it blistered Obama in an ad for his supposed inattentiveness to foreign policy and cited Thiessen's Post column.

Next thing you know, as Kessler points out to us, the White House schedule started looking a little different. On Sept. 14 (four days after Thiessen's column) and every workday since, through Monday, it listed Obama - and sometimes Vice President Biden - as being briefed.

Asked about that recent uptick in Obama's "attendance, " White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Tuesday afternoon: "As we've said countless times, the president reads the PDB every day and most days he's in D.C. has an Oval [Office] session." Vietor added that the scheduling had "nothing to do" with Thiessen's column.

Well, okay.

Calling all eggheads

In the ever-uglier Senate race in Massachusetts, Republican incumbent Scott Brown has tried to make proletarian hay out of Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren's academic background.

He calls her "Professor Warren." Subtext: See! She's one of those ivory-tower elitists! And he has bashed her Harvard salary. ("How very uppah-crust!" the truck-driving Bruins fan seems to be crowing.)

Warren, though, isn't running away from her smarty-pants rep. In fact, she's doubling down with a fundraiser Wednesday night outside Boston daring folks to match their brains against her crack staffers in a trivia battle royal.

"Come Test Your Wits against Elizabeth Warren's Policy Team" the invite taunts. Luckily, the prices are such that even a public-school grad might afford them: $20 for an individual and $100 for a team.

Would-be attendees should hope the categories don't include topics of particular Warren expertise, such as "The Fine Print of the Bankruptcy Law" - or "Scott Brown's Voting Record. "

Cut out the middleman

Fluency in bureaucratic-speak is harder than it looks.

The Senate voted Friday to boost Jim Syring's military rank, a prerequisite for his taking the position of director of the Missile Defense Agency, the job the president selected him for last month. And we assumed the Senate still hadn't confirmed him for the job, since the Congressional Record notice about the vote included nary a mention of the missile agency or the title Syring is to hold there. The Loop reported that he'd gotten "half a loaf" by getting the necessary boost in rank but not the job itself.

Alas, we underestimated the import of the phrase that followed the announcement of his promotion: "while assigned to a position of importance and responsibility." Turns out, those innocuous little words mean big things for Syring - namely, that the promotion to vice admiral means that he's now eligible for the military to hand him over the keys to the MDA - just as the president directed - with no further approval from the Senate needed.

Couldn't have been any clearer, right?

Still, questions remain. Like when will Syring actually take over as head of MDA?

Still no word. That's as clear as . . . federal code.

Oh, thank heaven

Anyone strolling into the7-Eleven in Foggy Bottom on Tuesday evening in search of a caffeine fix may have thought the store was showing support for Mitt Romney. There were disposable coffee cups emblazoned with the Republican presidential candidate's name but no similar offerings featuring the incumbent.

A Loop fan and coffee swiller noticed the seemingly partisan selection and asked the manager about it. Turns out he ran out of Obama cups earlier in the day. More tomorrow, he promised.

Which figures, since the convenience store is a mere Slurpee's throw from State Department headquarters, where we can assume few employees would want to be seen toting Romney gear.

With Emily Heil

kamena@washpost.com

The blog: washingtonpost.com/intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.


LOAD-DATE: September 26, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



787 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Conservative 'Super PACs' Sharpen Their Synchronized On-Air Message


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 10


LENGTH: 1291 words


Independent political groups have long been the guerrilla warriors of presidential elections, tossing explosive advertisements into the middle of a campaign like hand grenades, with little regard for the strategy of the candidate they support.

But this year, in a tight race that leaves very little room for error, the conservative ''super PACs'' and other outside entities working to defeat President Obama have reached a consensus: Going off message is simply too risky.

So they operate largely from the same playbook, sharing polling data and focus group research to develop many of the same lines of attack. And they are being careful to keep their efforts consistent with the themes being emphasized by Mitt Romney's campaign.

The result is a striking degree of symmetry. To see many of the anti-Obama ads that have run on television recently, it would be easy to conclude that they were made in the same studios, by the same producers working for the same campaign.

From the numbers they throw out (23 million people looking for work, $5 trillion in new debt), to the illustrations they use (a squiggly red line, plunging steeply), they are often indistinguishable except for the disclaimer saying who approved this message.

''Dishonest on taxes because he failed on jobs,'' says a recent ad from Crossroads GPS, the group run with the help of Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists.

''Barack Obama wasted $800 billion on a failed stimulus,'' says another produced by Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC.

It is no accident that the theme driving these ads -- Mr. Obama is a failed leader -- is also a major component of the Romney campaign's message. An ad released last week by the campaign declares that the president is ''failing American families.''

This sharpened message is providing the Romney campaign crucial cover as it works to raise more money to pay for advertising of its own and recover from its recent stumbles. And by coordinating their advertising purchases, the outside groups are maintaining a continuous presence on the air for the next few weeks while plugging many of the holes in Mr. Romney's ad schedule. Over the last two weeks, these groups have allowed Mr. Romney to keep pace on the air, roughly matching what Mr. Obama and his supporters have spent. This week they will ensure Mr. Romney has the advantage by several million dollars in competitive states.

The implications for Mr. Obama, who has been able to prevent Mr. Romney's poll numbers from rising in swing states like Ohio and Florida in part because of his heavy spending on attack ads, are considerable. He now faces the full force of the Republican message machine -- with more than $100 million at its disposal -- coming at him in lock step.

''Outside groups have to view themselves in a supportive and amplifying role, not as some rogue enterprise trying to score their own points,'' said Steven J. Law, president of Crossroads GPS and its sister super PAC, American Crossroads. ''In the past, groups would go off on their own and come up with what they thought was a great idea. And they could potentially do significant harm.''

He added that the groups are careful now to keep one another in the loop. ''There's a great deal of sharing,'' he said.

And as long as they do not coordinate with Mr. Romney's strategists, everything is perfectly legal. Though campaigns and outside groups are prohibited from collaborating, they are free to amplify and emulate each other.

''All of us have come to our own conclusions, but we have all come to the same conclusion,'' said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group financed in part by Charles and David Koch. ''To defeat the president, the public needs to understand the utter failures of his economic policies.''

A change in pitch in the message that Americans for Prosperity was using is just one example of the way independent political groups have gotten on the same page. The group started out by focusing on the Solyndra scandal, attacking the president as a corrupt figure who granted his cronies lucrative government contracts.

But their latest television campaign -- featuring real voters describing how they feel let down by the president and will not support him again -- borrows a page from the American Crossroads playbook, which found that more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger critiques of Mr. Obama worked better with swing voters than ads with a hard edge.

''The tone is crucial,'' Mr. Phillips said. ''Our ads don't call anyone names. They're very measured.''

Independent groups have long been the attack dogs and provocateurs of modern politics. The ads they produce -- about a convict on furlough named Willie Horton or Swift Boat veterans -- have become synonymous with dirty politics.

That is not likely to change. But their tactics have become more deliberate, reflecting how difficult it is to develop a hard-hitting message against a president who remains well liked.

Republicans today seem to have less tolerance than ever for going off message. In May, a conservative group led by Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of T. D. Ameritrade, ignited a furious backlash after word leaked that it was considering an ad campaign that would have tied Mr. Obama to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and the minister's ''black liberation'' theology. The proposal, called ''The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama,'' died a quick death, condemned by strategists in both parties.

''Look at all the controversy that erupted before even a single ad had been cut,'' said John Sides, a political science professor at George Washington University. ''They realize that more different kinds of messages that are in ads, the more their message is diluted.''

Last week Mr. Ricketts's group announced a new $10 million ad campaign. But rather than use a slash-and-burn approach, the ads feature interviews with ordinary Americans who explain in measured terms how they will not be voting for Mr. Obama again.

Message is not the only aspect these groups can coordinate. They have also worked to supplement one another's advertising purchases and fill in gaps for Mr. Romney.

While Mr. Romney's campaign has booked just around $5 million in airtime this week, American Crossroads and a similarly minded conservative group called Americans for Job Security are picking up the slack, reserving more than $8 million worth of advertising combined. About $6 million of that is from Americans for Job Security, the rest from American Crossroads. And next week the two groups will switch off, with American Crossroads putting about $6 million into ads and Americans for Job Security spending about $2 million.

The result is that Mr. Romney and his allies will outspend Mr. Obama and pro-Democratic independent groups on the air in most battleground states this week, including Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Virginia. And the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is carrying all the weight in Wisconsin, where it is outspending Mr. Obama and his allies by four to one this week.

These groups are also looking at ways they can work together to do more than just dent Mr. Obama's popularity with attack ads. Mr. Law of American Crossroads said he and the other groups were likely to begin producing more commercials that play up Mr. Romney's experience for swing voters rather than focusing mostly on attacking Mr. Obama to motivate conservative voters.

''An advantage that Republicans have is that our base is energized,'' said Charles Spies, a founder of Restore Our Future. ''We don't need to be targeting the base with personal attacks or hard-hitting ads. Swing voters are already concerned about Obama's economic record, and we just need to reinforce that he has been a failure on jobs and the economy.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/us/politics/conservative-super-pacs-sharpen-their-synchronized-message.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: From the numbers they cite to the illustrations they use, some of the televised anti-Obama commercials developed for conservative political groups are indistinguishable except for the disclaimer saying who approved the message. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY RESTORE OUR FUTURE
CROSSROADS GPS
AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



788 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


About-Face For Bankers' New Lobbyist


BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN


SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEALBOOK; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 987 words


"I went to Wall Street and told them to get their snout out of the trough because they are some of the worst offenders when it comes to bailouts and carve-outs and special deals."

That was Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, just over a year ago while running for president, railing against big banks.

So what's he up to now?

Last week, he was named president of the Financial Services Roundtable, one of Wall Street's most influential lobbying organizations. In his new job, in which his predecessor was paid $1.8 million annually, Mr. Pawlenty will spend his days shuttling around Washington, trying to convince lawmakers that those "carve-outs and special deals" really are beneficial for the nation's banking system, though presumably without putting his "snout in the trough."

To say that the choice of Mr. Pawlenty to represent the banking industry is odd would be an understatement, but his appointment is the clearest sign yet of the flexible ethic that makes the revolving door in Washington spin faster.

Consider many of Mr. Pawlenty's previously espoused views, which are likely to need to change when his new job begins in November:

Mr. Pawlenty has repeatedly said he was against the bank bailouts that some say helped save many of the member firms of the lobbying organization he just joined. "I don't think the government should bail out Wall Street or the mortgage industry or for that matter any other industry," he told Fox News in January 2011 when questioned about his final position on the matter, which appeared to shift at times.

Last summer, when the banking industry - and the Financial Services Roundtable, specifically - was lobbying Washington to raise the debt ceiling to avert a default, Mr. Pawlenty was taking a different tack.

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase had called a potential default "catastrophic." Mr. Pawlenty's view? "Well, we don't know that," he said when asked on MSNBC about the many dire predictions of the fallout of a default. He suggested that Republicans play chicken with the Democrats, questioning the very premise that the country was on the verge of default. "I hope and pray and believe they should not raise the debt ceiling," he told voters in Iowa.

And while Wall Street may like - some say love - the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, Mr. Pawlenty has a starkly different view.

"I opposed his appointment last time, so it wouldn't be hard for me to oppose his reappointment next time, and I don't think he should continue in that position," he told CNBC in June 2011.

And then there is his public view of President Obama, who, depending on which poll you believe, has a chance of still being president and regulating the industry that Mr. Pawlenty now represents. "President Obama isn't as bad as people say, he's actually worse," Mr. Pawlenty declared at the Republican National Convention as national co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He is leaving that post to take the new job. Now, in his new role representing the banking industry, there are even odds, if not better, that Mr. Pawlenty will have to work with an Obama administration. Those will be some fun meetings.

So how exactly was it that Mr. Pawlenty, who has no financial industry background, got the job?

He declined to comment for this column.

Despite Mr. Pawlenty's thinking on certain Wall Street issues, he has become a banking favorite over the last two years, speaking out against government regulation, and in particular, President Obama. According to Open Secrets, the top five donors to his presidential run, grouped by company, were Goldman Sachs, Moelis & Company, Wells Fargo, Capital Group Companies and Morgan Stanley. In total, he raised just over $5 million. His name recognition alone will most likely open doors in Congress, which, in the world of lobbying, is half the battle.

Steve Bartlett, the current president of the Financial Services Roundtable, who will be retiring and handing over the reins to Mr. Pawlenty, said he believed his successor was "a consensus builder," with "integrity" and was "bipartisan." He paused for a moment before acknowledging that "bipartisan certainly isn't the first word to come to mind" given the last two years ahead of the presidential election, but that Mr. Pawlenty is "bipartisan-minded." He said that "this is not a selection about who is going to be in office in the next four years."

He also pointed out that, with some important exceptions, "the fact is that the issues we deal with typically don't get up to the presidential level." (That may be true of lobbying that goes on for small amendments, but the overhaul reforms of Wall Street that were recently passed and many of which still must be enacted are on the radar of the White House, if they are not indeed driven by it.)

Before getting too far into the conversation, Mr. Bartlett warned that he was not intimately involved in the hiring process. "I was N.I.F.O. - nose in, fingers out." He described a rigorous hiring process, saying that more than 100 people had been considered for the job and at least 30 people were interviewed.

When I asked how he felt about Mr. Pawlenty's comments about the bailouts, which seem at odds with his organization, he said: "Our views are totally consistent. I don't find those views to be at odds."

But then he said, "different time, different context." He continued by describing Mr. Pawlenty as "a guy sitting outside the Beltway," who had the luxury and freedom to say how he felt.

How about Mr. Pawlenty's views on Mr. Bernanke?

"I haven't heard Tim Pawlenty on that," he said.

And what about Mr. Pawlenty's views of defaulting on the debt ceiling?

"In Washington there is an old saying, 'Where you stand depends on where you sit.' "

Sadly, no truer words have ever been said about the influence of money on our nation's capital.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/about-face-for-bankers-new-lobbyist/


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Tim Pawlenty, who will lead the Financial Services Roundtable, giving a speech during the Republicans' convention last month. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B9)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



789 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(After Deadline)


September 25, 2012 Tuesday


Early and Often


BYLINE: PHILIP B. CORBETT


SECTION: TIMESTOPICS


LENGTH: 1571 words



HIGHLIGHT: Even if the nonstop commercials and coverage didn't tip you off, there are certain words in the air that unmistakably say, "It's election time!"


Even if the nonstop commercials and coverage didn't tip you off, there are certain words in the air that unmistakably say, "It's election time!"

Political buzzwords and jargon are rampant, and our coverage is not immune. Some of these terms are unavoidable. But we should be aware, and be on the lookout for alternatives to the worst offenders.

With help from my colleague Patrick LaForge and others, I've rounded up just a few examples - some perennials, some newcomers.

The Search for 'Resonance'

This relative newcomer is quickly establishing itself in the political-cliché firmament. Issues and arguments are "resonating" all over the nation and all over our stories. Possible alternatives include affect, appeal to, matter to, concern, be of concern to, etc.

Mr. Romney's campaign released 15 new ads in all, each focused on a specific state and the issues most likely to resonate with voters there.

Last week, Randy Falco, Univision's chief executive, wrote a letter urging the Commission on Presidential Debates to add a debate that would focus on issues like education, health care and immigration that particularly resonate with Hispanic voters.

Obviously, the politics are not quite that simple - Democrats could campaign on the issue, and maybe their arguments would resonate among voters who would see less personal impact from Mr. Ryan's proposed changes.

Political messaging isn't a simple matter, and skilled political candidates can develop pitches that resonate with different audiences.

Mitt Romney's campaign advisers have concluded that they do not need any major adjustments in strategy to respond to the new focus on abortion and reproductive rights caused by Representative Todd Akin, betting that their candidate's economic message will still resonate with female voters after the controversy over Mr. Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape" subsides.

War Chests and Battlegrounds

"War chest" is a particularly tired example of the martial metaphors that pepper campaign coverage (though "campaign coffers" is tired, too). "Battleground states" is another overdone war trope.

Though Republican "super PACs" gave him cover by showing their own ads during the summer, Mr. Romney was limited by campaign finance regulations from spending his $185 million war chest on advertising until he officially became the nominee.

And since then, he has raised $788,000 for his campaign war chest - more than 40 times what his challenger in the Republican primary raised.

Now that Mr. Romney is the official nominee, he will be free to spend his huge general election campaign war chest, which, according to the most recent report, stood at more than $180 million.

If Romney can pull that off, he will leave Tampa ahead in the polls, flush with cash, having shaken off the negatives the Democrats have blown their war chest flinging at him.

Shore Up, Then Solidify

Besides seeking resonance, campaigns spend a lot of time trying to "solidify" and "shore up" support.

The Obama campaign hopes the convention will be a boon to organizing efforts and help solidify gains in its newly won territory.

Further, Mr. Boehner probably expects his toil and largess will be remembered by some of the more raucous corners of his conference should they prevail this November, and will help him solidify his support among those members.

The trip was much like any of the hundreds hosted in recent years by a nonprofit off shoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Washington lobby, and the purpose was much the same: to solidify the support of American lawmakers for Israel at a time of Middle East tumult.

Keeping Their Distance

What's a politician to do if an issue doesn't "resonate" with voters? Better "distance" yourself, and quick.

Senator Scott P. Brown, a Republican who is locked in a tight re-election battle against Elizabeth Warren, used them to distance himself from his party - a necessity in deep-blue Massachusetts

Representative Paul D. Ryan sought to distance himself from Todd Akin, his House colleague, on Wednesday by condemning his comments about rape, even while deflecting questions about the meaning of "forcible rape."

The speaker did not distance himself from the proposal itself.

Stumbling Along

Besides seeking issues that resonate and distancing themselves from unpopular stances, politicians must avoid mistakes - or "stumbles," as they are now officially known.

 Romney Stumbles in Explaining Iran Policy
But the imprecise language suggested that Mr. Romney had stumbled over the distinction at the core of the debate over whether a military strike against Iran is justified.

Mr. Obama's aides initially appeared to stumble when television interviewers asked them to respond to Mr. Romney's charge in his nomination acceptance speech Thursday night that Americans were not better off under Mr. Obama.

He [Obama] savored Mr. Romney's stumbles in the Republican primaries this time around, an adviser said, professing wonder that it took him so long to lock up the nomination.

The "Meet the Press" appearance would seem to signal a new phase for Mr. Romney, when chances for exposure on network television - especially after his opponent's big week - must outweigh the risks of a stumble or gaffe.

Opponent Made the Stumble, but a Candidate Still Watches Her Step

The Usual Suspects

The list goes on. Some longstanding entries in the field that show no sign of fading:

double down
neck and neck
optics
pivot
narrative
on the ground

Let's look for other options.

In a Word

This week's grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

Six of the jets, which each cost between $23 million and $30 million when they were first acquired by the United States Navy, according to a General Accounting Office report, were completely destroyed and two more were so severely damaged it was unlikely they could be repaired.

"Destroyed" means ruined, and doesn't need the modifier here.

A natural curiosity about how the material has been translated into a new medium tends to be outweighed by a general foreboding born of past experience.

"Past" is unnecessary and gives this phrase a clichéd feel; all experience happens in the past.

Of course, quotations often serve as furniture in a house that a reporter is free to build as she or he (or their editor) wishes, so it's not as if sources can control the narrative by controlling what appears between quotation marks.

The plural "their" is awkward referring to the singular "he or she." It could have simply been "an editor."

In 2010, Apple filed a patent application for a small fuel-cell power supply that could potentially give the iPhone and iPad enough juice to last for weeks without the need to plug them in.

The slang seems unnecessary and out of place in a straight piece.

The hawkish Romney adviser has been secunded to manage the running mate and graft a Manichaean worldview onto the foreign affairs neophyte.

Just a typo, I guess, but a pretty ugly one: make it "seconded."

These companies, which include communications media like Facebook and Twitter, write their own edicts about what kind of expression is allowed, things as diverse as pointed political criticism, nudity and notions as murky as hate speech.

Piling "as murky as" on top of "as diverse as," in the same series, leaves this awkward and convoluted.

But this week lawmakers approved a measure permitting a statue of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which has been holed up for years in a District government building a mile away, to be placed in the Capitol, as soon as President Obama signs the bill.

Our dictionary says "holed up" is informal, and it calls to mind gun molls and gats. It also doesn't make sense in reference to a statue. Try "stored" or "kept."

Last year, he demonstrated how, in some cases, U.D.I.D.'s could be used to find a person's identity, determine their location and even hijack their Facebook profile.

The plural "their" doesn't work with the singular "a person." Rephrase.

State officials said the changes have not discouraged voters.

A sequence-of-tenses problem. Make it "said the changes had not discouraged" or "said the changes were not discouraging."

The jibe apparently referred not to Obama's statement but to one issued independently by the U.S. embassy in Cairo, deploring the video.

Recorded announcement: The word meaning "jeer, taunt" is "gibe."

Whatever the motivation, at the end of the day, it all comes down to creating value, whether it's business value or personal value.

Trite. At the end of the day ... it gets dark outside.

Marigay McKee, chief merchant at Harrods, said that the past five years had been a game changer.

This unwelcome bit of sports jargon has already been beaten to death in politics and business stories. Let's resist.

Neither Mr. Liu nor Ms. Ru have been charged with any wrongdoing.

Make it "has."

Jamaica, also understandably, made just one change but appeared mostly disinterested in attacking for much of the night.

In precise writing, use "uninterested" to mean "lacking interest."

Of Mumbai's 30 square kilometers, or 11.6 square miles, of open space, only 10 square kilometers is actually available and being used - a miniscule 0.88 square meters, or approximately just 9 square feet, per person.

Minuscule with a U, of course.



LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



790 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Opinionator)


September 25, 2012 Tuesday


Zebra-nomics


BYLINE: TIMOTHY EGAN


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 534 words



HIGHLIGHT: The N.F.L. is willing to tarnish its reputation for the price of a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl.


Oh, the horror: on the greatest national stage we have, in the last second of a close game, a bunch of replacement referees from the Lingerie Football League and other far outposts of the sport took a game away from the rightful winners.

All because an incredibly prosperous cartel wants its longtime workers to take a cut in pension benefits - this at a time when the cartel is earning more money than at any time in its history, and has the greatest audience in American television.

But the "inaccurate reception," as they're calling the interception-that-became-a-touchdown Monday night, could spur many of the couch-dwelling citizens of Football Nation to give Mitt Romney's Bain-style corporate economics a hard look. It's worked so well for the rest of the United States, this wealth gap, this creative destruction on behalf of the noble job creators. Now look what it's doing to the true national pastime.

Just look at who wants to get the union referees back on the job today: Scott Walker, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, and Paul Ryan, Romney's union-dissing running mate. "Just give me a break!" Ryan tweeted. "It's time to get the real refs."

So what's at stake in an economics parable that goes to heart of our true passion?About $3 million and change. That's it. The refs, who earn between $78,000 and $139,000 annually for part-time work, are holding out to preserve their pensions, among other sticking points. The National Football League, which took in more than $9 billion in revenue last year and owned 23 of the 25 most watched telecasts last year, wants to cut the pension contribution by about 60 percent, moving the refs from a defined benefit into something closer to a 401(k).

What's $3 million to the N.F.L.? It's the price of a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. So, to be clear, the most popular entertainment commodity in the land is willing to seriously tarnish its name, its reputation and the validity of its games for the price of a single half-minute ad.

Of course, it's usually hard to find sympathy for the zebras. But by bringing in such an incompetent crew, and standing hard for greed over credibility, the football owners have roused a nation to the side of the faceless vice principals and other officious types who wear the stripes. Monday night's game took over the Twitterverse, and even prompted another plea from President Obama to bring the refs back.

And while I should be joyous that my feisty, young, oft-overlooked Seattle Seahawks have now beaten the evil Dallas Cowboys and the perennially likable and publically owned Green Bay Packers, I can't exult.

No, not with that lousy call that gave my boys the game in the last second, fresh in the mind. Two headlines, from the two states, said it all.

"Grand Larceny: Packers Get Robbed of Win in Seattle." That from the OshKosh Northwestern.

"Hawks Steal One." The Seattle Times.

On Tuesday, the N.F.L. said the final score would stand - no further reviews.

But nobody wants to win on the backs of incompetents, particularly here in Seattle, a proud union town.



LOAD-DATE: September 26, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



791 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)


September 25, 2012 Tuesday


Romney at the Clinton Global Initiative


BYLINE: ANDREW ROSENTHAL


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 552 words



HIGHLIGHT: The candidate has fine ideas on foreign aid. But they're not exactly new.


The Republican nominee's speech at the Clinton Global Initiative was surprisingly reasonable. Granted, Mr. Romney got in a few digs at President Obama, but they were subtle and almost funny. And he was a bit light on details, but the occasion didn't really call for granularity.

Mr. Romney actually endorsed the general concept of foreign aid, hardly popular in this year's Tea-Party steeped climate. He also argued that traditional methods for doling out money are lacking.

"The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work and the fostering of free enterprise," he said.

Those are laudable goals, and I doubt he'll get any argument from the Obama administration. Like the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration has linked aid to human rights benchmarks and directed funds to businesses. For instance, the Wall Street Journal noted that "U.S. economic aid to Middle East nations that were part of the Arab Spring revolutions was designed to be channeled as business incentives that could run decades, ultimately helping U.S. exports."

Mr. Romney also said he would "focus our efforts on small and medium-sized businesses." After the fall of European Communism, the United States created enterprise funds that gave seed loans to businesses starting up in the post-Soviet era. These were successful, in some cases actually turning a profit, and have largely faded from the scene. If Mr. Romney wants to bring those back, it seems like a good idea.

Pushing the envelope a bit, Mr. Romney said that the United States should make foreign aid conditional on countries' lowering barriers to entrepreneurship and trade with the United States. In return, he said, "developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law and property rights." The problem here, as The Journal pointed out, is that "some of the largest recipients of U.S. economic aid-such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Haiti-have barely developed private sectors."

Foreign aid is a tiny part of the U.S. budget. The total for fiscal year 2012, according to the Congressional Research Service, was $37.7 billion, or 1 percent of the total budget.

Of the total, the CRS says, only $4.4 billion goes to "economic growth." The rest goes to humanitarian, health and education assistance, and the biggest chunk, $10.56 billion, to military aid, virtually all of which is spent on American-made military products. Egypt gets $1.2 billion-$2 billion a year, and Israel gets about $3 billion.

The aid to Egypt and Israel, by the way, is tightly bound to the Camp David peace accord between those two countries. Mr. Romney, like Mr. Obama, often mentions holding Egypt to that agreement.

If a President Romney tries to maintain but revamp foreign aid, his problem won't be with liberals. It will be with the right wing of his own party, elements of which are already trying to kill all aid to Egypt and Libya, and have never liked foreign aid in general. It's pretty unpopular with voters, according to opinion polls, who mostly seem to think it represents a larger fraction of the budget than it really does.



LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



792 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 25, 2012 Tuesday


Sarah Silverman Talks About Voter ID Ad


BYLINE: EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 469 words



HIGHLIGHT: A new video, called "Let My People Vote," touched a nerve and has been viewed more than 1.4 million times since last Thursday. With plenty of four-letter words and a sense of outrage, Ms. Silverman encourages voters to make sure they have the proper identification to vote in November.


In a follow-up to her "Great Schlep" video from the last presidential election, Sarah Silverman decided to take on new voter identification laws that could prevent some people from voting this time around.

The video has  touched a nerve and has been viewed more than 1.4 million times since last Thursday. With plenty of four-letter words and a sense of outrage, Ms. Silverman encourages voters to make sure they have the proper identification to vote in November.

In her first interview since the video was released, Ms. Silverman said she was angry about the Republican-backed laws because everyone should have the right to vote. As for the colorful language, she said, it serves a purpose.

"I think it's important to make it kind of shocking," said Ms. Silverman, who was in New York this week to perform a stand-up show. "The expletives are fairly gratuitous. But you have to be loud to get people to see what's going on."

Four years ago, the comedian asked young people to travel to Florida to persuade their Jewish grandparents to vote for Barack  Obama. The "Great Schlep" video got more than 2 million views and inspired some young people to take up the challenge.

In the new video, called "Let My People Vote," Ms. Silverman explains that social security cards, veteran identification cards and college student identification cards will not be accepted at the polls in some states, but handgun permits can be used in some places as identification.

"It makes perfect sense," Ms. Silverman deadpans in the video. "Get these kids gun permits. Oh, I feel safer from voter fraud already."

Democrats have criticized the new voter identification laws for targeting young people, minority members and the elderly, who may be less likely to have photo identification, but Republicans argue they are important to prevent vote fraud. Many of the laws have been challenged in court, and they are currently being reviewed in several states, including Pennsylvania.

The video has spread quickly on Twitter and Facebook in the past few days. Ms. Silverman posted the link to her 3.3 million followers on Twitter last week and sent out another link Tuesday asking people to register to vote.

The video was paid for by the Jewish Council for Education and Research, a "super PAC "that is supporting President Obama. The group is trying to reach young people online to make sure they are registered and enthusiastic about the president's re-election. campaign

Ms. Silverman says there is no question that young people should support Mr. Obama. On the most basic level, she said, the president supports a woman's right to abortion, as well as gay marriage. Or in Ms. Silverman's blunt words: "I think that any female, any homosexual and anyone who loves a female or homosexual or has one in their family is crazy to vote for Mitt Romney."


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



793 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION


Presidential race creates jobs, all right -- for fact-checkers


SECTION: EDIT; Pg. 10A


LENGTH: 536 words


Presidential campaigns have never been exemplars of honesty, but the current contest seems to be heading for new standards of mendacity, as well as shamelessness when false statements are exposed.

President Obama and his backers repeatedly distort Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, even to the point of linking him to a woman's cancer death in an online ad by Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama Super PAC.

Romney and his supporters, meanwhile, start with kernels of truth -- about subjects such as Obama's "apology" tour, his support for wealth redistribution and his administration's rules on waivers of welfare's work requirement -- then twist them beyond all recognition.

Distorting the truth is bad enough. Equally revealing is how the campaigns react when their whoppers are called out by non-partisan fact-checking organizations, such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com, which help voters unravel all the claims and counterclaims. Do the campaigns back down? No, too often they double down and attack the fact-checkers.

For example, even after fact-checking showed Romney's attack ad on Obama's welfare waivers to be inaccurate, the campaign didn't pull the spot. It released a second one. A Romney advertising official told reporters that the welfare ad is the campaign's "most effective." No surprise there. Playing to stereotypes that reinforce people's biases works. Facts -- no waivers have been issued, and there is no "Obama plan" to issue welfare checks to people who don't work -- just get in the way.

Though candidates have long put effectiveness ahead of veracity, what seems new this time around is the willingness to say out loud what campaign operatives used to think but mostly kept to themselves. "I don't care what FactCheck says," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., when he was confronted on CNN with an analysis that undermined the premise of a Romney ad. Further clarifying the issue, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told journalists during the GOP convention: "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."

The Obama campaign hasn't been quite as publicly clumsy, but the implied message is the same: Don't worry about accuracy; this stuff is working.

Most of the fact-checking is being overseen by veteran journalists, and there has been a growing attempt to undermine fact-checkers by accusing them of bias.

Two things are worth saying about this: One is that fact-checking relies on the same sort of thorough research journalists conduct when they do their jobs right; the difference is the willingness to go a step further and, based on evidence, assign a rating.

The second is that candidates who cry bias when they're in the cross hairs happily approve when the verdicts go the other way. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler notes that most of the items in the Romney campaign's compilation of "The Obama Campaign's Top Ten Lies & Exaggerations" are attributed to fact-checkers.

Fact-checkers' real audience isn't the politicians. It's the voters, who benefit from independent analysis of the blizzard of attack ads. Fact-checkers aren't perfect, but their analyses are often much closer to the truth than anything you'll hear from the candidates themselves.


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



794 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 25, 2012 Tuesday 10:10 PM EST


Scott Brown responds to war cry video;
The senator weighs in on a report identifying men shouting 'war whoops' at a rally as aides to him, saying he does not condone that behavior.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 752 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

The best political ads of 2012, so far (VIDEO)

Who are the undecided voters? (VIDEO)

Washington Post poll: Sen. Bill Nelson leads Connie Mack by 14 in Florida

The all-important early vote, and how to track it

Washington Post poll: Brown leads Mandel in Ohio Senate race

5 takeaways from the Washington Post Ohio and Florida polls

Ohio moves to 'Lean Obama' on Fix electoral map

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* President Obama's campaign released a second TV ad hitting Mitt Romney over his "47 percent" comment. The latest ad also slams Romney over his 2011 tax return, which his campaign released last Friday. "Romney paid just 14 percent in taxes last year on over $13 million in income, almost all from investments," says the narrator of the ad.

* Up against a deadline to remove himself from the ballot as a Senate candidate, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said once again that he is staying in the race all the way to November. 

* Both Obama and Romney appeared Tuesday at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual summit in New York. Romney called for an overhaul of the country's foreign assistance programs while Obama outlined additional steps the U.S. would take to combat human trafficking. 

* A liberal Massachusetts blog published video of what a report says are staffers to Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) chanting "war whoops" and making "tomahawk chops" during a rally. A local station reported that the men in the video include Brown's Constituent Service counsel. In recent days, Brown has been hitting Elizabeth Warren (D) over her claims to Native American heritage.  Brown says he does not approve of the staffers' actions. 

* Crossroads GPS launched a new round of Senate ads in four states Tuesday, at a total cost of $3.7 million. The GOP nonprofit group launched spots against Democrats running in Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada.

* Former senator George Allen's (R) latest TV ad casts former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine as a tax-raiser, pointing to his remark at a debate last week that he would be "open to a proposal that has some minimum tax level for everyone." 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* An eighth grade student has admitted to vandalizing Rep. Michael Grimm's (R-N.Y.) campaign office. Grimm said he is "relieved to know this is not politically motivated," after previously calling the incident a "politically motivated crime." Grimm's office computers were not tampered with or erased, contrasting what Grimm had previously said. Grimm defended his original assessment, saying, "At the time, when we saw three large window panes broken, following a consistent pattern of lawn sign thefts and after several locations with Grimm signs and posters were barraged with eggs, it was not hard to come to any other conclusion." In an unrelated incident, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) says his residence has been burglarized, but police say they don't don't see any signs of break-ins. 

* Good news for Republicans with an eye on Rep. Reid Ribble (R) in Wisconsin's 7th District race: The Service Employees International Union doesn't plan to follow through with its $130,000 ad reservation in the Green Bay market. Jamie Wall is Ribble's Democratic challenger. 

* North Carolina Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton (D) released a new ad in the governor's race, but then promptly took it down. The campaign didn't say why it did so, but a screenshot of the ad shows that it included a misspelling of Republican nominee Pat McCrory's name.

* Former surgeon general Richard Carmona's (D) latest TV commercial is a comparison ad that says he will support veterans, while Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voted to cut veterans' benefits. Carmona is a Vietnam War veteran. 

* Rep. Martin Heinrich's (D-N.M.) newest Senate campaign TV ad says he will "Cut taxes for middle-class families, not millionaires and big corporations. Protect Social Security and Medicare - no vouchers and no privatization."

* Rep. Jon Runyan (R-N.J.) leads Democrat Shelley Adler 51 percent to 34 percent in a McLaughlin & Associates poll conducted for his campaign last week. 

THE FIX MIX:

Unlikely friends.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



795 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 25, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


Iran's president accuses Israel of 'threatening' U.S.


BYLINE: Anne Gearan


SECTION: A section; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 688 words


NEW YORK - Israel is bullying the United States over the alleged threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, using the prospect of an Israeli military attack on Iran to force the hand of its much larger ally, Iran's president said Monday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the idea that Israel might attack on its own, over the objections of the United States, and said Israel is an inconsequential interloper with no rightful place in the Middle East.

"I look at it from the outside, and I see that a few occupying Zionists are threatening the government of the United States," Ahmadinejad said during an interview with American editors and reporters.

"Is it the Zionists who must tell the United States government what to do, such as form a red line on Iran's nuclear issues, and the United States government must make such vital decisions under the influence of the Zionists?" Ahmadinejad said, using the Iranian regime's term for Israel. He spoke through an interpreter.

Americans should be insulted if their government takes marching orders from Israel, Ahmadinejad added.

The two-term Iranian leader spoke on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The gathering this year is colored by the politics of the U.S. presidential election and by the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.

The Obama administration is chafing under increasingly direct pressure from Israel to declare "red lines" in Iran's nuclear development that would trigger a U.S. attack. President Obama, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday, has said he would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb. He has threatened a military strike if there is no other option to prevent Iran from getting a bomb, but he has not publicly set a deadline for diplomacy to run its course.

The Obama administration opposes a unilateral Israeli strike because it would be unlikely to finish off Iran's program and could pull the United States into a wider Middle East war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to tell the United Nations in an address Thursday that Israel must decide for itself what risk is unacceptable. In a clear challenge to Obama, Netanyahu said this month that outsiders who refuse to set a "clear red line" for Iran do not have the authority to tell Israel what to do.

Iran's clerical leaders have previously vowed to eradicate Israel, although Ahmadinejad did not repeat that threat Monday.

He said he is not worried that Israel would go it alone; he made it clear that a U.S. strike is the only one Iran would take seriously.

"The people do not even count them as any part of an equation," he said of Israel. "When you have prepared yourself for a much vaster, bigger threat, then of course the small disturbances hardly represent anything more than a blip on the radar screen."

Ahmadinejad said Iran remains open to negotiation over the bounds of what he insisted is a peaceful nuclear development program, but he said several U.S. administrations have "managed to miss" opportunities to improve relations with Iran.

Although Netanyahu is presumed to favor Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Ahmadinejad declined an offer to endorse Obama. Netanyahu is featured in a pro-Romney television ad airing in Florida.

"The U.S. elections are a domestic issue," Ahmadinejad said. "We will not meddle in that at all."

Obama and Romney traded accusations about Israel and Iran in high-profile television interviews that aired over the weekend. Romney said in a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday on CBS that Obama was making a "mistake" by not meeting with Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. meeting.

Obama's choice "sends a message throughout the Middle East that somehow we distance ourselves from our friends," Romney said. "I think the exact opposite approach is what's necessary."

Speaking on the same program, Obama defended his handling of foreign policy.

"If Governor Romney is suggesting that we start another war, he should say so," he said.

Obama and Romney will address the Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York on Tuesday.

anne.gearan@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



796 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 25, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


The gloves come off in Mass. contest


BYLINE: Karen Tumulty


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1231 words


BOSTON - The most closely watched Senate race in the country has taken a sharp turn off the high road.

As Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and challenger Elizabeth Warren (D) enter the final phase of their exceedingly tight race, each is seeking to undermine the other on the very traits that had been considered their greatest political strengths: his independence and her character.

Brown is suggesting that the woman who made a national reputation as a fierce advocate for the middle class and consumers is a phony.

Warren, meanwhile, is urging Massachusetts voters to look beyond their affection for Brown to consider the votes he has cast and the national consequences of an election that could help return the Senate to Republican control.

Brown on Monday launched the most brutal salvo yet in a campaign that until recently was notable for its civility. His new television ad highlights the controversy over Warren's unproved claim that she is of Native American heritage. It also raises the possibility - also unproved, and denied by those involved in hiring her - that she claimed minority status for professional advancement.

The 30-second spot resurrects what Republicans call the "Fauxcahontas" flap, which had died down since erupting last spring. At the end of the ad, an interviewer asks Warren whether anything else will come out about her, and the Harvard Law School professor replies, laughing, "You know, I don't think so, but who knows?"

It amplifies a larger message that Brown has been pounding over and over in recent days, as he has also questioned the size of her Harvard salary and her past work on behalf of an insurance company involved in an asbestos suit.

"The true Elizabeth Warren is coming out and will continue to come out," Brown said at an appearance Saturday in South Boston, the only part of this deeply Democratic city to support him when he won his Senate seat in a special election two years ago.

Though theirs is the most expensive Senate race in the country, with more than $53 million raised so far, the two candidates made a pact in January to disavow advertising by outside groups. That had helped keep the race more positive and restrained than many others, as Brown sought to maintain his nice-guy image and Warren to tamp down hers as a scold.

Warren launched the first negative ads of the campaign this month, at a time when some Democrats - including former governor Michael Dukakis, the 1988 presidential nominee - were criticizing the candidate and her campaign for failing to connect.

It was a gentle jab at first.

"Scott Brown's not a bad guy. He doesn't always vote the wrong way," Warren said in one of those ads. "But too often, on things that really matter, he's not with you." She cited Brown's opposition to President Obama's jobs bills, his vote against imposing higher taxes on millionaires and his support for subsidies to oil companies.

But in a fundraising e-mail sent after his new ad appeared on Monday, she was blunter: "We know where Scott Brown stands - and it's not with the people of Massachusetts. It's with big money and his Republican buddies."

The latest polls show the race to be a tight one, with the candidates trading narrow leads from one survey to the next. Ordinarily, a Democrat would hold a significant advantage, given that this is a presidential election year when Massachusetts voters are expected to come out in force to reelect Obama. The president leads Mitt Romney by more than 20 percentage points in recent polls.

Brown stunned the state's Democratic political establishment two years ago, when he won the special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of senator Edward M. Kennedy (D).

In his reelection bid, Brown has been emphasizing a willingness to work across party lines. One of his ads showed Obama congratulating him with a "good job" at a White House signing ceremony for legislation to curb insider trading by members of Congress.

"Brown has a lot of support in this neighborhood," said John Stenson, owner of the Eire Pub in Dorchester, locally famous as a stop for politicians, including President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 1992.

While Dorchester is considered Democratic territory, Stenson said, many there relate to Brown's working-class roots and his independence.

"They like the way he came up," Stenson said. "He's not a silver bullet for either side. He seems to be an independent thinker."

Brown was there on Saturday afternoon, conducting interviews from behind the bar while his wife, Gail Huff, a longtime Boston television reporter, was downing a pastrami sandwich and a pint of Guinness in a booth in the corner.

The senator invariably refers to his opponent as "Professor Warren," a none-too-subtle suggestion of elitism. He also cites her six-figure salary as an example of why college costs are so high.

But Warren has her own up-by-her-bootstraps story, as the daughter of a man who once worked as a janitor in Oklahoma.

Her supporters say they are unfazed - and indeed, impressed - by the elite world in which she has established herself.

"She's a professor. Do you get any better than that?" asked Adelina Tiberio, waiting to meet Warren at a festival in Watertown on Saturday. Tiberio made it only as far as the fourth grade before emigrating from Italy more than half a century ago, but she said her son received a PhD from Cornell.

Warren has begun bringing in some powerful reinforcements. On Friday, for instance, Boston's Democratic Mayor Thomas Menino stepped off the sidelines to endorse Warren and promised that he would put his political machine to work on her behalf.

And on Monday, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka gave a speech in Boston in which he pleaded with his membership, especially men, to get beyond what he suggested is lingering sexism and get behind Warren.

"We have a problem because some voters - and let me be perfectly honest, I'm talking about voters who look just like me - have not stood up beside Elizabeth Warren to support her," Trumka said. ". . . There may be dozens of good reasons for us to vote for her, but it's crazy not to vote for her because she's a woman, or because she's a college professor, or for any other superficial reason. . . .

"Do we want a buddy who'll pat us on the back? Who wears a Bruins jersey with the boys?" Trumka added. "Or a leader who will fight for our right to form unions and bargain for a better life?"

In 2008, exit polls indicated that nearly a third of Massachusetts voters lived in a union household. But last week, an internal AFL-CIO poll indicated that they are no more likely than other voters to support Warren.

Though Warren can come off as stilted in speeches and on television, she is an energetic campaigner. In settings such as the Watertown fair, where she made her way through the crowd dispensing hugs to the adults and pinkie swears to the kids, she can seem more personable.

It had been little more than a day since her first televised debate with Brown, and many of her supporters were offering advice.

Asked what they were telling her, Warren said: "Gee, I've got to stick with the G-rated stuff. People say, go out and - I'm going to put this diplomatically - hold him to his record. The other piece of advice is talk about control of the Senate."

In other words, take off the gloves - a message that both candidates appear to be heeding.

tumultyk@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



797 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 25, 2012 Tuesday 7:32 PM EST


Ad watch: Obama again attacks '47 percent' quote, Romney's taxes;
Obama again ties Romney's taxes to 47 percent remarks.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 90 words


President Obama, "Fair Share" 

What it says: "Instead of attacking folks who work for a living... Shouldn't we stand up for them?"

What it means: Obama's not dropping the 47 percent. Or Mitt Romney's taxes. It's the incumbent's second ad this week tying Romney's comments about those who don't pay federal income taxes to the Republican candidate's own tax rate. 

Who will see it: The ad is airing in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



798 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 25, 2012 Tuesday 2:22 PM EST


Ohio moves to 'Lean Obama' on Fix electoral map;
A major ratings change in the Buckeye State.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 739 words


In the wake of a new Washington Post poll that shows President Obama opening up an eight-point lead among likely voters in Ohio, along with a slew of other survey data - public and private - that shows the incumbent with a clear edge, we are moving the Buckeye State from "toss up" to "Lean Obama."

With the change, Obama now has 255 electoral votes either solidly (196) in his camp or leaning (59) in his direction. He needs only 15 more to win a second term in six weeks time.

The Ohio move is one that we have - publicly - contemplated for quite a while now, as the public polling has signaled clear movement toward Obama. Here's how the Real Clear Politics poll of polls in Ohio looks at the moment:

Our main reason for waiting to make any Ohio move was to steer clear of any temporary bump Obama got from the Democratic National Convention. It's now clear that, convention or no convention, the Buckeye State has tilted toward Obama, and if nothing major changes between now and Election Day, the incumbent will win the state.

That's a major development in this campaign. First of all, no Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio. Second, as we have noted in several recent posts, even with Ohio and its 18 electoral votes, Romney faces a narrow path to the 270 electoral votes he needs. Subtract Ohio and the math becomes that much more difficult.

Remember that with Ohio leaning his way, Obama needs to win only 15 more electoral votes to claim a second term. Win Nevada and Colorado (and lose every other state we currently rate as a toss up or lean/solid Romney), and Obama wins. Win Wisconsin and Iowa, and Obama wins. Carry Florida, and Obama wins. 

The best thing that Romney has going for him in Ohio - and nationally - is that the election is six weeks from today and not today. That should allow his campaign, the Republican National Committee and various conservative outside groups an opportunity to turn around a race/state that is just not headed in the right direction for Romney at the moment.

Warren launches ad defending herself on Native American issue: Elizabeth Warren took to the airwaves Monday to defend herself against charges that she sought to gain professionally by claiming Native American heritage.

The charge has dogged her campaign for months, with Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) campaign launching an ad this week alleging that she claimed the heritage (she says she is 1/32nd Native American) to advance her career. By the end of the day, Warren launched her response ad.

"Let me be clear: I never asked for, never got any benefit because of my heritage," Warren says directly to the camera. "The people who hired me have all said they didn't even know about it.

"Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I'm going to keep fighting for yours."

The ad, of course, is a tacit acknowledgement that the issue threatens her campaign, which has recently made gains in the polls. The kind of direct-to-camera defense utilized by the Warren campaign is generally what you see from candidates facing some kind of damaging scandal or problem.

Fixbits:

Obama says the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya "wasn't just a mob action."

The Iowa Republican Party increases its registration advantage.

A federal judge in Florida declines to prevent the state from reducing early voting from 14 days to eight.

In Rep. Joe Donnelly's (D-Ind.) new TV ad, he says the Senate candidate is in the "Hoosier common sense middle."

Tim Kaine and George Allen show off their cooking skills.

Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon (R) was late with more property tax bills.

One of the four New York state senators who voted for the state's gay marriage law was apparently defeated in a primary Monday. Another claimed victory in his primary.

Police say nothing on Rep. Michael Grimm's (R-N.Y.) campaign office computers was tampered with or erased, in contrast to the Grimm campaign's version of events following vandalism of the office over the weekend.

Must-reads:

"Sensing an opening, Mitt Romney focuses attacks on Obama's foreign policy" - Nia-Malika Henderson, Washington Post

"Conservatives Embrace Alternate Polling Reality" - Ruby Cramer, BuzzFeed

"In Massachusetts Senate race, Warren and Brown take off the gloves" - Karen Tumulty, Washington Post

"New Rules Upend House Re-Election Races in California" - Norimitsu Onishi, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



799 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition


Iran's president accuses Israel of 'threatening' U.S.


BYLINE: Anne Gearan


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 686 words


DATELINE: NEW YORK


NEW YORK - Israel is bullying the United States over the alleged threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, using the prospect of an Israeli military attack on Iran to force the hand of its much larger ally, Iran's president said Monday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the idea that Israel might attack on its own, over the objections of the United States, and said Israel is an inconsequential interloper with no rightful place in the Middle East.

"I look at it from the outside, and I see that a few occupying Zionists are threatening the government of the United States," Ahmadinejad said during an interview with American editors and reporters.

"Is it the Zionists who must tell the United States government what to do, such as form a red line on Iran's nuclear issues, and the United States government must make such vital decisions under the influence of the Zionists?" Ahmadinejad said, using the Iranian regime's term for Israel. He spoke through an interpreter.

Americans should be insulted if their government takes marching orders from Israel, Ahmadinejad added.

The two-term Iranian leader spoke on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The gathering this year is colored by the politics of the U.S. presidential election and by the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.

The Obama administration is chafing under increasingly direct pressure from Israel to declare "red lines" in Iran's nuclear development that would trigger a U.S. attack. President Obama, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday, has said he would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb. He has threatened a military strike if there is no other option to prevent Iran from getting a bomb, but he has not publicly set a deadline for diplomacy to run its course.

The Obama administration opposes a unilateral Israeli strike because it would be unlikely to finish off Iran's program and could pull the United States into a wider Middle East war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to tell the United Nations in an address Thursday that Israel must decide for itself what risk is unacceptable. In a clear challenge to Obama, Netanyahu said this month that outsiders who refuse to set a "clear red line" for Iran do not have the authority to tell Israel what to do.

Iran's clerical leaders have previously vowed to eradicate Israel, although Ahmadinejad did not repeat that threat Monday.

He said he is not worried that Israel would go it alone; he made it clear that a U.S. strike is the only one Iran would take seriously.

"The people do not even count them as any part of an equation," he said of Israel. "When you have prepared yourself for a much vaster, bigger threat, then of course the small disturbances hardly represent anything more than a blip on the radar screen."

Ahmadinejad said Iran remains open to negotiation over the bounds of what he insisted is a peaceful nuclear development program, but he said several U.S. administrations have "managed to miss" opportunities to improve relations with Iran.

Although Netanyahu is presumed to favor Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Ahmadinejad declined an offer to endorse Obama. Netanyahu is featured in a pro-Romney television ad airing in Florida.

"The U.S. elections are a domestic issue," Ahmadinejad said. "We will not meddle in that at all."

Obama and Romney traded accusations about Israel and Iran in high-profile television interviews that aired over the weekend. Romney said in a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday on CBS that Obama was making a "mistake" by not meeting with Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. meeting.

Obama's choice "sends a message throughout the Middle East that somehow we distance ourselves from our friends," Romney said. "I think the exact opposite approach is what's necessary."

Speaking on the same program, Obama defended his handling of foreign policy.

"If Governor Romney is suggesting that we start another war, he should say so," he said.

Obama and Romney will address the Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York on Tuesday.

anne.gearan@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



800 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


The gloves come off in Mass. contest


BYLINE: Karen Tumulty


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1229 words


DATELINE: BOSTON


BOSTON - The most closely watched Senate race in the country has taken a sharp turn off the high road.

As Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and challenger Elizabeth Warren (D) enter the final phase of their exceedingly tight race, each is seeking to undermine the other on the very traits that had been considered their greatest political strengths: his independence and her character.

Brown is suggesting that the woman who made a national reputation as a fierce advocate for the middle class and consumers is a phony.

Warren, meanwhile, is urging Massachusetts voters to look beyond their affection for Brown to consider the votes he has cast and the national consequences of an election that could help return the Senate to Republican control.

Brown on Monday launched the most brutal salvo yet in a campaign that until recently was notable for its civility. His new television ad highlights the controversy over Warren's unproved claim that she is of Native American heritage. It also raises the possibility - also unproved, and denied by those involved in hiring her - that she claimed minority status for professional advancement.

The 30-second spot resurrects what Republicans call the "Fauxcahontas" flap, which had died down since erupting last spring. At the end of the ad, an interviewer asks Warren whether anything else will come out about her, and the Harvard Law School professor replies, laughing, "You know, I don't think so, but who knows?"

It amplifies a larger message that Brown has been pounding over and over in recent days, as he has also questioned the size of her Harvard salary and her past work on behalf of an insurance company involved in an asbestos suit.

"The true Elizabeth Warren is coming out and will continue to come out," Brown said at an appearance Saturday in South Boston, the only part of this deeply Democratic city to support him when he won his Senate seat in a special election two years ago.

Though theirs is the most expensive Senate race in the country, with more than $53 million raised so far, the two candidates made a pact in January to disavow advertising by outside groups. That had helped keep the race more positive and restrained than many others, as Brown sought to maintain his nice-guy image and Warren to tamp down hers as a scold.

Warren launched the first negative ads of the campaign this month, at a time when some Democrats - including former governor Michael Dukakis, the 1988 presidential nominee - were criticizing the candidate and her campaign for failing to connect.

It was a gentle jab at first.

"Scott Brown's not a bad guy. He doesn't always vote the wrong way," Warren said in one of those ads. "But too often, on things that really matter, he's not with you." She cited Brown's opposition to President Obama's jobs bills, his vote against imposing higher taxes on millionaires and his support for subsidies to oil companies.

But in a fundraising e-mail sent after his new ad appeared on Monday, she was blunter: "We know where Scott Brown stands - and it's not with the people of Massachusetts. It's with big money and his Republican buddies."

The latest polls show the race to be a tight one, with the candidates trading narrow leads from one survey to the next. Ordinarily, a Democrat would hold a significant advantage, given that this is a presidential election year when Massachusetts voters are expected to come out in force to reelect Obama. The president leads Mitt Romney by more than 20 percentage points in recent polls.

Brown stunned the state's Democratic political establishment two years ago, when he won the special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of senator Edward M. Kennedy (D).

In his reelection bid, Brown has been emphasizing a willingness to work across party lines. One of his ads showed Obama congratulating him with a "good job" at a White House signing ceremony for legislation to curb insider trading by members of Congress.

"Brown has a lot of support in this neighborhood," said John Stenson, owner of the Eire Pub in Dorchester, locally famous as a stop for politicians, including President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 1992.

While Dorchester is considered Democratic territory, Stenson said, many there relate to Brown's working-class roots and his independence.

"They like the way he came up," Stenson said. "He's not a silver bullet for either side. He seems to be an independent thinker."

Brown was there on Saturday afternoon, conducting interviews from behind the bar while his wife, Gail Huff, a longtime Boston television reporter, was downing a pastrami sandwich and a pint of Guinness in a booth in the corner.

The senator invariably refers to his opponent as "Professor Warren," a none-too-subtle suggestion of elitism. He also cites her six-figure salary as an example of why college costs are so high.

But Warren has her own up-by-her-bootstraps story, as the daughter of a man who once worked as a janitor in Oklahoma.

Her supporters say they are unfazed - and indeed, impressed - by the elite world in which she has established herself.

"She's a professor. Do you get any better than that?" asked Adelina Tiberio, waiting to meet Warren at a festival in Watertown on Saturday. Tiberio made it only as far as the fourth grade before emigrating from Italy more than half a century ago, but she said her son received a PhD from Cornell.

Warren has begun bringing in some powerful reinforcements. On Friday, for instance, Boston's Democratic Mayor Thomas Menino stepped off the sidelines to endorse Warren and promised that he would put his political machine to work on her behalf.

And on Monday, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka gave a speech in Boston in which he pleaded with his membership, especially men, to get beyond what he suggested is lingering sexism and get behind Warren.

"We have a problem because some voters - and let me be perfectly honest, I'm talking about voters who look just like me - have not stood up beside Elizabeth Warren to support her," Trumka said. ". . . There may be dozens of good reasons for us to vote for her, but it's crazy not to vote for her because she's a woman, or because she's a college professor, or for any other superficial reason. . . .

"Do we want a buddy who'll pat us on the back? Who wears a Bruins jersey with the boys?" Trumka added. "Or a leader who will fight for our right to form unions and bargain for a better life?"

In 2008, exit polls indicated that nearly a third of Massachusetts voters lived in a union household. But last week, an internal AFL-CIO poll indicated that they are no more likely than other voters to support Warren.

Though Warren can come off as stilted in speeches and on television, she is an energetic campaigner. In settings such as the Watertown fair, where she made her way through the crowd dispensing hugs to the adults and pinkie swears to the kids, she can seem more personable.

It had been little more than a day since her first televised debate with Brown, and many of her supporters were offering advice.

Asked what they were telling her, Warren said: "Gee, I've got to stick with the G-rated stuff. People say, go out and - I'm going to put this diplomatically - hold him to his record. The other piece of advice is talk about control of the Senate."

In other words, take off the gloves - a message that both candidates appear to be heeding.

tumultyk@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



801 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition


Iran's president accuses Israel of 'threatening' U.S.


BYLINE: Anne Gearan


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A10


LENGTH: 686 words


DATELINE: NEW YORK


NEW YORK - Israel is bullying the United States over the alleged threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, using the prospect of an Israeli military attack on Iran to force the hand of its much larger ally, Iran's president said Monday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the idea that Israel might attack on its own, over the objections of the United States, and said Israel is an inconsequential interloper with no rightful place in the Middle East.

"I look at it from the outside, and I see that a few occupying Zionists are threatening the government of the United States," Ahmadinejad said during an interview with American editors and reporters.

"Is it the Zionists who must tell the United States government what to do, such as form a red line on Iran's nuclear issues, and the United States government must make such vital decisions under the influence of the Zionists?" Ahmadinejad said, using the Iranian regime's term for Israel. He spoke through an interpreter.

Americans should be insulted if their government takes marching orders from Israel, Ahmadinejad added.

The two-term Iranian leader spoke on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The gathering this year is colored by the politics of the U.S. presidential election and by the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.

The Obama administration is chafing under increasingly direct pressure from Israel to declare "red lines" in Iran's nuclear development that would trigger a U.S. attack. President Obama, who is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday, has said he would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb. He has threatened a military strike if there is no other option to prevent Iran from getting a bomb, but he has not publicly set a deadline for diplomacy to run its course.

The Obama administration opposes a unilateral Israeli strike because it would be unlikely to finish off Iran's program and could pull the United States into a wider Middle East war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to tell the United Nations in an address Thursday that Israel must decide for itself what risk is unacceptable. In a clear challenge to Obama, Netanyahu said this month that outsiders who refuse to set a "clear red line" for Iran do not have the authority to tell Israel what to do.

Iran's clerical leaders have previously vowed to eradicate Israel, although Ahmadinejad did not repeat that threat Monday.

He said he is not worried that Israel would go it alone; he made it clear that a U.S. strike is the only one Iran would take seriously.

"The people do not even count them as any part of an equation," he said of Israel. "When you have prepared yourself for a much vaster, bigger threat, then of course the small disturbances hardly represent anything more than a blip on the radar screen."

Ahmadinejad said Iran remains open to negotiation over the bounds of what he insisted is a peaceful nuclear development program, but he said several U.S. administrations have "managed to miss" opportunities to improve relations with Iran.

Although Netanyahu is presumed to favor Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Ahmadinejad declined an offer to endorse Obama. Netanyahu is featured in a pro-Romney television ad airing in Florida.

"The U.S. elections are a domestic issue," Ahmadinejad said. "We will not meddle in that at all."

Obama and Romney traded accusations about Israel and Iran in high-profile television interviews that aired over the weekend. Romney said in a "60 Minutes" interview that aired Sunday on CBS that Obama was making a "mistake" by not meeting with Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. meeting.

Obama's choice "sends a message throughout the Middle East that somehow we distance ourselves from our friends," Romney said. "I think the exact opposite approach is what's necessary."

Speaking on the same program, Obama defended his handling of foreign policy.

"If Governor Romney is suggesting that we start another war, he should say so," he said.

Obama and Romney will address the Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York on Tuesday.

anne.gearan@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



802 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 25, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


The gloves come off in Mass. contest


BYLINE: Karen Tumulty


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1229 words


DATELINE: BOSTON


BOSTON - The most closely watched Senate race in the country has taken a sharp turn off the high road.

As Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and challenger Elizabeth Warren (D) enter the final phase of their exceedingly tight race, each is seeking to undermine the other on the very traits that had been considered their greatest political strengths: his independence and her character.

Brown is suggesting that the woman who made a national reputation as a fierce advocate for the middle class and consumers is a phony.

Warren, meanwhile, is urging Massachusetts voters to look beyond their affection for Brown to consider the votes he has cast and the national consequences of an election that could help return the Senate to Republican control.

Brown on Monday launched the most brutal salvo yet in a campaign that until recently was notable for its civility. His new television ad highlights the controversy over Warren's unproved claim that she is of Native American heritage. It also raises the possibility - also unproved, and denied by those involved in hiring her - that she claimed minority status for professional advancement.

The 30-second spot resurrects what Republicans call the "Fauxcahontas" flap, which had died down since erupting last spring. At the end of the ad, an interviewer asks Warren whether anything else will come out about her, and the Harvard Law School professor replies, laughing, "You know, I don't think so, but who knows?"

It amplifies a larger message that Brown has been pounding over and over in recent days, as he has also questioned the size of her Harvard salary and her past work on behalf of an insurance company involved in an asbestos suit.

"The true Elizabeth Warren is coming out and will continue to come out," Brown said at an appearance Saturday in South Boston, the only part of this deeply Democratic city to support him when he won his Senate seat in a special election two years ago.

Though theirs is the most expensive Senate race in the country, with more than $53 million raised so far, the two candidates made a pact in January to disavow advertising by outside groups. That had helped keep the race more positive and restrained than many others, as Brown sought to maintain his nice-guy image and Warren to tamp down hers as a scold.

Warren launched the first negative ads of the campaign this month, at a time when some Democrats - including former governor Michael Dukakis, the 1988 presidential nominee - were criticizing the candidate and her campaign for failing to connect.

It was a gentle jab at first.

"Scott Brown's not a bad guy. He doesn't always vote the wrong way," Warren said in one of those ads. "But too often, on things that really matter, he's not with you." She cited Brown's opposition to President Obama's jobs bills, his vote against imposing higher taxes on millionaires and his support for subsidies to oil companies.

But in a fundraising e-mail sent after his new ad appeared on Monday, she was blunter: "We know where Scott Brown stands - and it's not with the people of Massachusetts. It's with big money and his Republican buddies."

The latest polls show the race to be a tight one, with the candidates trading narrow leads from one survey to the next. Ordinarily, a Democrat would hold a significant advantage, given that this is a presidential election year when Massachusetts voters are expected to come out in force to reelect Obama. The president leads Mitt Romney by more than 20 percentage points in recent polls.

Brown stunned the state's Democratic political establishment two years ago, when he won the special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of senator Edward M. Kennedy (D).

In his reelection bid, Brown has been emphasizing a willingness to work across party lines. One of his ads showed Obama congratulating him with a "good job" at a White House signing ceremony for legislation to curb insider trading by members of Congress.

"Brown has a lot of support in this neighborhood," said John Stenson, owner of the Eire Pub in Dorchester, locally famous as a stop for politicians, including President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 1992.

While Dorchester is considered Democratic territory, Stenson said, many there relate to Brown's working-class roots and his independence.

"They like the way he came up," Stenson said. "He's not a silver bullet for either side. He seems to be an independent thinker."

Brown was there on Saturday afternoon, conducting interviews from behind the bar while his wife, Gail Huff, a longtime Boston television reporter, was downing a pastrami sandwich and a pint of Guinness in a booth in the corner.

The senator invariably refers to his opponent as "Professor Warren," a none-too-subtle suggestion of elitism. He also cites her six-figure salary as an example of why college costs are so high.

But Warren has her own up-by-her-bootstraps story, as the daughter of a man who once worked as a janitor in Oklahoma.

Her supporters say they are unfazed - and indeed, impressed - by the elite world in which she has established herself.

"She's a professor. Do you get any better than that?" asked Adelina Tiberio, waiting to meet Warren at a festival in Watertown on Saturday. Tiberio made it only as far as the fourth grade before emigrating from Italy more than half a century ago, but she said her son received a PhD from Cornell.

Warren has begun bringing in some powerful reinforcements. On Friday, for instance, Boston's Democratic Mayor Thomas Menino stepped off the sidelines to endorse Warren and promised that he would put his political machine to work on her behalf.

And on Monday, AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka gave a speech in Boston in which he pleaded with his membership, especially men, to get beyond what he suggested is lingering sexism and get behind Warren.

"We have a problem because some voters - and let me be perfectly honest, I'm talking about voters who look just like me - have not stood up beside Elizabeth Warren to support her," Trumka said. ". . . There may be dozens of good reasons for us to vote for her, but it's crazy not to vote for her because she's a woman, or because she's a college professor, or for any other superficial reason. . . .

"Do we want a buddy who'll pat us on the back? Who wears a Bruins jersey with the boys?" Trumka added. "Or a leader who will fight for our right to form unions and bargain for a better life?"

In 2008, exit polls indicated that nearly a third of Massachusetts voters lived in a union household. But last week, an internal AFL-CIO poll indicated that they are no more likely than other voters to support Warren.

Though Warren can come off as stilted in speeches and on television, she is an energetic campaigner. In settings such as the Watertown fair, where she made her way through the crowd dispensing hugs to the adults and pinkie swears to the kids, she can seem more personable.

It had been little more than a day since her first televised debate with Brown, and many of her supporters were offering advice.

Asked what they were telling her, Warren said: "Gee, I've got to stick with the G-rated stuff. People say, go out and - I'm going to put this diplomatically - hold him to his record. The other piece of advice is talk about control of the Senate."

In other words, take off the gloves - a message that both candidates appear to be heeding.

tumultyk@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



803 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 24, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


For Vice President, a Heartbeat Away From the Public Isn't Close Enough


BYLINE: By TRIP GABRIEL


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 766 words


MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Yes, Joseph R. Biden Jr. gives a lot of stump speeches.

But, no, that is not the most indelible part of his campaign style.

Whenever his motorcade, with the Secret Service and the flashing lights, makes an unannounced stop at a simple diner, coffee shop or Dairy Queen, the vice president of the United States moves in close -- very close.

Outside the Airport Diner here on Saturday, Mr. Biden shook Samantha Mullin's hand while stroking her left forearm. He placed a hand on one shoulder. He put his other hand on her other shoulder. As he looked into her eyes, he touched her cheek.

The encounter lasted no more than 30 seconds, and Mr. Biden was on to the next voter.

Mr. Biden is a touch person, draping arms around people's shoulders to pose for a picture and then keeping them draped while continuing to chat. At a high school in New Hampshire on Friday, he fielded a question from a history teacher, Kayleigh Durkin, 26, by extending a hand to draw her into the center of a circle of students with him. While he spoke, he continued to hold her hand, as though they were a high school couple going steady.

Did it feel awkward? ''No, I was so excited,'' Ms. Durkin said later. ''I love him.''

That is a common enough reaction from people, usually women, whom the vice president pulls into his close encounters. ''It was out of my comfort zone but not uncomfortable,'' said Christina Funk, 29, a critical-care nurse who welled up while the vice president told her recently at a Wisconsin sandwich shop how important nurses are.

''His body language -- facing me with both hands on my shoulders, standing face to face only about an inch and a half away from mine and unrelenting eye contact -- combined with the genuine sincerity of his words'' were what ''brought tears to my eyes,'' Ms. Funk said in an e-mail message.

Politicians have always pressed the flesh. But few relish doing so as heartily as Mr. Biden. His old-fashioned style turns out to be well suited to an age in which a photograph of a spontaneous encounter with a voter can spread through social media and deliver the impression that politicians are just like us.

Two weeks ago, an image of a pizza shop owner hoisting President Obama off the ground ricocheted around the Internet just a day after one surfaced of Mr. Biden pulling a woman in motorcycle leathers nearly into his lap at a diner.

The visits are hardly casual; an advance team typically spends a week preparing for Mr. Biden's arrival, carefully selecting locations for unannounced drop-ins as well as conventional rallies.

On the Republican side, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the vice-presidential nominee, is a man comfortable in his own skin when he sits down for a hot dog at a restaurant, though he has done far fewer of those drop-ins lately. Mitt Romney rarely pops up in public unannounced, reinforcing a theme that has dogged him during his campaign -- that he lacks a common touch.

As Mr. Biden worked his way around the Acoustic Café in Eau Claire, Wis., this month, he snatched crackers and other tidbits off diners' plates. Posing for a picture with his arms around two women, he glanced back at a group of men and said, ''Hard work, guys.''

But Mr. Biden's loosey-goosey style also has the potential to get him into trouble, adding to a decades-old reputation that he is gaffe-prone and undisciplined.

After introducing himself to a table of Greek-Americans at a coffee shop last month by saying, ''I'm Joe Bidenopoulos,'' Mr. Biden was accused of insensitivity in an effort to court ethnic voters. ''Vice President Joe Biden mocked a Greek,'' the conservative Weekly Standard wrote.

As it happened, Mr. Biden encountered another table of Greek-Americans at the Airport Diner on Saturday, and he sought to set the record straight.

Describing his Aug. 31 visit to the Mocha House in Warren, Ohio, he recounted that one of three older Greek men had told him, ''They tell me you're Greek.''

''I said, 'My name is Joe Bidenopoulos,' because he had just said that,'' Mr. Biden told the New Hampshire diners. The news media, he said, ''played it like Biden's pretending to be Greek.''

Nearly the entire time, his arm was wrapped around the shoulder of Marika Spirou, whose husband, Chris Spirou, is a former chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

Ms. Spirou later said the gesture had been respectful. It is ''very normal'' for Greeks to be physically affectionate with friends, she said. ''We're very 'touch,' very emotional.'' It was her husband who, seeing some of that in Mr. Biden years ago, began calling him Joe Bidenopoulos.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/us/politics/on-the-trail-biden-gets-closer-than-most-to-voters.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. shared a diner bench with Marika Spirou on Saturday in Manchester, N.H. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



804 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


September 24, 2012 Monday


Inching Toward Completion


BYLINE: WILLIAM ALDEN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 2330 words



HIGHLIGHT: Several big transactions are getting a fair amount of scrutiny. | One Spanish lender, Banco Santander, will be in the spotlight this week when its Mexican subsidiary goes public. | A new study challenges accepted wisdom about C.E.O. pay. | The latest iPhone got a lot of hype, but Apple has begun to behave like Microsoft once did.


Inching Toward Completion  |  Several big transactions are getting a fair amount of scrutiny. Many of these deals, if completed, have the potential to change the landscape of their industries.

European politicians are taking a close look at a proposed merger between two aerospace giants, BAE and EADS, and the heads of France and Germany met over the weekend. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said at a news conference with President Francois Hollande of France that the pair discussed "what needs to be considered in connection" with the deal, but "no decision was taken." The two aerospace companies are also planning concessions that could help them secure regulatory approval - like creating a "ring-fenced" American arm with just one British director and no board seats for French or German executives, The Sunday Times reports.

The mining company Xstrata got an extension from regulators on its deadline to respond to the sweetened offer from Glencore. Though Xstrata's board backed the previous offer from Glencore, it's being more cautious this time after shareholders complained the price had been too low.

Ryanair, the European low cost airline, submitted a new package of proposals to assuage regulators' concerns about its bid to take over the Irish carrier Aer Lingus.

On Monday, the French oil and gas services company CGGVeritas said it was buying the seismic data unit of the Dutch engineering company Fugro for about $1.5 billion, giving it more access to natural resources in Australia and Western Europe.

And BP has offered to acquire a bigger stake in the Russian state oil company Rosneft, as long as it can sell its interests in a private joint venture, TNK-BP. DealBook reports that the deal could become a payday for BP shareholders, who are growing impatient with the chief executive's leadership in turning around the company after the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Test for Spanish Banks  |  It's not a happy time to be a Spanish banker, with deposits flowing out and the government mulling how to prop up the sector. The extent of the problem could become clearer on Friday, when results of stress tests are scheduled to be released.

But one Spanish lender, Banco Santander, will be in the spotlight this week when its Mexican subsidiary goes public. The deal is set to be one of the year's biggest I.P.O.'s, with a goal of raising as much as $4.2 billion, and it could be priced as soon as Tuesday. The I.P.O. was in demand as of Friday, with orders amounting to roughly 1.5 times the size of the planned offering, according to Bloomberg News, which cited two unidentified people familiar with the deal.

European leaders are still discussing the plan by the Continent's central bank to support the bonds of countries like Spain. The Spanish government, which has hesitated to ask for help from Europe, is getting ready to announce a rescue plan, according to a Financial Times report on Friday. A meeting between Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, and Ms. Merkel of Germany is set for Tuesday.

A Myth of C.E.O. Pay  |  It's an argument that has become cliche - a chief executive, if not paid a lot of money, will defect for another company. But Gretchen Morgenson, in her column in The New York Times, points to a study that challenges the accepted wisdom:

"New research by Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, and Craig K. Ferrere, one of its Edgar S. Woolard fellows, begins by attacking this conventional wisdom. Mr. Elson and Mr. Ferrere conclude, contrary to the prevailing line, that chief executives can't readily transfer their skills from one company to another. In other words, the argument that C.E.O.'s will leave if they aren't compensated well, perhaps even lavishly, is bogus. Using the peer-group benchmark only pushes pay up and up."

On the Agenda  |  Goldman Sachs's president, Gary D. Cohn, is presiding over a gala for the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases and Center for Musculoskeletal Care tonight at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Mr. Cohn once was treated at the hospital when he twisted his thumb while skiing, according to Bloomberg News. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chief executive, is a guest at the annual meeting this week of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, as are President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. (On Sunday, the convention highlighted a Goldman initiative, 10,000 Women.) Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is testifying on Monday along with European officials at a European Parliament hearing on market manipulation and the scandal over manipulating Libor. Rajiv Goel, the witness whose testimony helped convict Raj Rajaratnam of insider trading, is scheduled to be sentenced today at 3:30 p.m. Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who just signed up to be a Wall Street lobbyist, is on CNBC at 8 a.m. The analyst Meredith Whitney is on CNBC at 3:10 p.m.

Steven Cohen to Sell Richter Painting  |  The painting by Gerhard Richter, "Prag 1883," is being auctioned at Christie's on Nov. 14 by the hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen. The Washington Post reports that the artwork is expected to fetch about $15 million.

John Paulson Off the Cuff  |  John A. Paulson characterizes the disclosures required of him by the Securities and Exchange Commission as "a complete waste of time," according to AR Magazine.

UBS Said to Have 'Risk-Seeking' Culture  |  Kweku M. Adoboli, the former UBS trader facing charges of fraud and false accounting in connection with a $2.3 billion loss, worked in an environment where big risks were the norm, his American manager said in court on Friday. The manager, John DiBacco, said that the size of some of the positions on the London trading floor surprised him. "I think there was a lot of risk-taking happening in London that was of a proprietary nature," Mr. DiBacco said he told investigators, DealBook reports.

Apple's Hype  |  The latest iPhone went on sale last week, predictably causing mobs to form at Apple stores around the country. Some observers are saying that Apple, the world's most valuable public company with a market value of $656 billion as of Friday, could reach a milestone on April 9, 2015, at around 11 a.m., writes Nick Bilton on the Bits blog:

"That is, statisticians and investors I've spoken with say, a conservative estimate of when Apple could become the first company ever to be valued at $1 trillion. (Yes, you read that correctly: the number one, followed by 12 zeros.)"

But Apple has begun to behave like Microsoft once did, focusing more on preserving its dominance than on inventing new things, Joe Nocera says. And Apple's big rival in handsets, Samsung Electronics, may be more formidable than many believe, says James B. Stewart.

Meanwhile, Foxconn Technology, a major supplier to some of the world's electronics giants, including Apple, said it closed one of its large Chinese plants early Monday after police were called in to break up a fight among factory employees.

  |  Contact: @williamalden | E-mail

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.

Mergers & Acquisitions »

Qatar Holding Said to Be in Talks to Buy Stake in Gold Company  |  The sovereign wealth fund is looking to buy a 49 percent stake in AUX, the gold company controlled by the Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, for about $2 billion, Reuters reports, citing three unidentified "banking sources."
REUTERS

Batista Said to Discuss Sale of Shipbuilding Business  |  The Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista is in talks to sell OSX to Sete Brasil Participacoes, Bloomberg News reports, citing two unidentified people with direct knowledge of the matter.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Yahoo C.E.O. to Talk Strategy  |  A date is set for Tuesday for Marissa Mayer to tell Yahoo employees what she plans to do with the company's search and advertising businesses, AllThingsD reports, citing an internal memo.
ALLTHINGSD

Owner of Village Voice to Break Up  |  A group of Village Voice Media Holdings executives are buying the newspaper chain, in a deal that separates the titles from the company's online classifieds unit, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

INVESTMENT BANKING »

Goldman Expands Hedge Fund Offerings  |  Goldman Sachs is giving clients access to some prominent hedge funds, like Brevan Howard and Jana Partners, through a new product that is similar to those at rival firms, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Whose Money Was at Stake in JPMorgan's Loss?  |  William D. Cohan writes in column in Bloomberg News: "JPMorgan Chase wants us to believe that it was shareholders' money that was lost, not depositors' money."
BLOOMBERG NEWS

'Free' Checking Comes With Even More Fees  |  
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Credit Suisse Said to Cut Jobs in Dubai  |  
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Credit Agricole Faces Higher Hurdle to Leave Greece  |  The French bank is likely to have to put an additional 600 million euros ($779 million) to 700 million euros into its Greek unit before it can be sold, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Time to Take a Break From Stocks?  |  Some money managers are considering taking their gains from stocks and sitting on the sidelines for a while, with possible risks looming, The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

PRIVATE EQUITY »

Private Equity Bosses Have Romney on the Mind  |  At the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst conference last week, "the elephant in the room" was the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, The Wall Street Journal reports. Richard Friedman, the head of merchant banking at Goldman Sachs, said, "I'm glad Romney is from Bain Capital and not Goldman Sachs."
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Japan Fund May Join a Bid for Chip Maker  |  A Japanese state-backed rescue fund may join big manufacturers in a bid to take over Renesas Electronics, which is also fielding an offer from K.K.R., Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

AXA Private Equity Raising Infrastructure Fund  |  The private equity arm of AXA, the French insurer, has raised more than $1.31 billion to invest in infrastructure projects, with plans to raise more, Reuters reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the fund-raising.
REUTERS

Robeco Draws Private Equity Interest  |  Financial News reports: "Private equity firms are battling to buy asset manager Robeco from parent Rabobank, which put it up for sale in May."
FINANCIAL NEWS

HEDGE FUNDS »

Hedge Funds Look to Ride a Stock Rally  |  Many hedge funds "that have the lagged the stock market rally in 2012 are now buying riskier stocks and commodities - and using more borrowed money - in an effort to play catch-up," Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Japanese Pension Fund to Invest in Alternatives  |  The Teachers' Mutual Aid Co-operative Society of Japan, with about $7.6 billion in assets, plans to start investing in hedge funds and real estate investment trusts, in an effort to diversify, Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Paying Tribute to a British Architect  |  The hedge fund manager Christian Levett, of Clive Capital, was among the guests at a gala in London to celebrate John Soane, an architect who was active in the 19th century, Bloomberg News reports.
BLOOMBERG NEWS

I.P.O./OFFERINGS »

Japanese Company Backed by Carlyle Abandons I.P.O.  |  Tsubaki Nakashima, a maker of ball bearings that is backed by the Carlyle Group, has canceled an I.P.O. of up to $555 million, Reuters reports.
REUTERS

Orders Pour in for Talanx I.P.O.  |  Reuters, citing "three financial sources," reports that the I.P.O. of Talanx, the German insurer, which is set for early October, is already fully subscribed.
REUTERS

Debating a New Standard in Internet Radio  |  A new Congressional bill would change the model that sites like Pandora use to set royalty rates, The New York Times reports.
NEW YORK TIMES

VENTURE CAPITAL »

The Wastefulness of Data Centers  |  A New York Times investigation found that data centers, the physical machines that power the information industry, "consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid, The Times found."
NEW YORK TIMES | NEW YORK TIMES

LEGAL/REGULATORY »

Paul Volcker Says 'Ring-Fencing' Is Not Enough  |  A plan to force British banks to separate traditional banking from riskier divisions may not be "terribly effective," Paul Volcker told The Telegraph. "It only works in fair-weather. But doesn't work in foul weather. They have already run into problems and they are bound to run into more."
TELEGRAPH

Standard Chartered Signs Pact With New York Regulator  |  The British bank, accused of illegally funneling money for Iranian banks and corporations, signed a settlement on Friday with New York State's top banking regulator.
DealBook »

How to Make Britain's Banks Behave  |  The British political establishment is trying various strategies to "analyze, understand and ultimately change the culture of the country's crisis-prone banks," The Wall Street Journal reports.
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Lawmaker Found Not to Have Broken Ethics Rules  |  A special investigator found that Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, did not violate House ethics rules during the financial crisis when she set up a Treasury Department meeting with a bank her husband owns stock in, The New York Times reports.
NEW YORK TIMES

Lehman Brothers Unit Found Liable for Investment Losses  |  Bloomberg News reports that the Australian unit of Lehman Brothers "is liable for losses three towns incurred from buying failed securities, a judge ruled. The lawsuit's sponsor said the case is the first of its kind to complete a trial."
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Britain Pledges $1.6 Billion for a State-Backed Bank  |  
REUTERS

Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon.


LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



805 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 24, 2012 Monday


New Week, Same Ad Themes: China and Taxes


BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 351 words



HIGHLIGHT: The Obama campaign is tying Mitt Romney's tax returns to his "47 percent" comments, while the Republican has put out his second ad that attacks the president's China policies.



Both presidential campaigns have new ads out, but the themes are familiar. The Obama campaign is tying Mitt Romney's tax returns to his "47 percent" comments, while the Republican has put out his second ad that attacks the president's China policies.

As Representative Paul D. Ryan heads to Ohio to begin the Republican ticket's bus tour (Mr. Romney will join him on Tuesday), the Obama campaign is starting to run its new spot in the state. "No Taxes" weaves together a critique of Mr. Romney's comments at a fund-raiser about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes with a call for him to disclose his returns from before 2010, noting that the candidate "paid just 14.1 percent in taxes last year" and saying that he is holding money offshore.

"Maybe instead of attacking others on taxes, Romney should come clean on his," the narrator says.

The ad also plays a clip from the fund-raiser in which Mr. Romney says, "My job is not to worry about those people." The narrator responds, "Isn't it the president's job to worry about everyone?"

The Romney camp has maintained that the candidate was speaking as a strategist at that moment, and Mr. Romney has since said that his campaign is about "the 100 percent in America."

Meanwhile, as Mr. Romney tries to steer his campaign back on track after a week marred by the secretly recorded video, his new spot amplifies an early attack on Mr. Obama's China policy. In a previous spot, Mr. Romney called China "cheaters." This time, the country is "stealing American ideas and technology," the announcer says, and Mr. Obama has failed to stand up to China, contributing to continued job losses and stubborn unemployment.

It is unclear to what extent the job losses noted in the ad are directly related to China's actions. "Seven times Obama could have taken action," the narrator says, a reference to the administration's refusal to label China a currency "manipulator," which administrations of both parties have also resisted doing. The Obama campaign has taken other actions, however, including a new trade caseannounced last week in, not surprisingly, Ohio.


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



806 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(DealBook)


September 24, 2012 Monday


About-Face for Bankers' New Lobbyist


BYLINE: ANDREW ROSS SORKIN


SECTION: BUSINESS


LENGTH: 973 words



HIGHLIGHT: To say that the choice of Tim Pawlenty to represent the banking industry is odd would be an understatement, but his appointment is the clearest sign yet of the flexible ethic that makes the revolving door in Washington spin faster.


"I went to Wall Street and told them to get their snout out of the trough because they are some of the worst offenders when it comes to bailouts and carve-outs and special deals."

That was Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota, just over a year ago while running for president, railing against big banks.

So what's he up to now?

On Friday, he was named president of the Financial Services Roundtable, one of Wall Street's most influential lobbying organizations. In his new job, in which his predecessor was paid $1.8 million annually, Mr. Pawlenty will spend his days shuttling around Washington, trying to convince lawmakers that those "carve-outs and special deals" really are beneficial for the nation's banking system, though presumably without putting his "snout in the trough."

To say that the choice of Mr. Pawlenty to represent the banking industry is odd would be an understatement, but his appointment is the clearest sign yet of the flexible ethic that makes the revolving door in Washington spin faster.

Consider many of Mr. Pawlenty's previously espoused views, which are likely to need to change when his new job begins in November:

Mr. Pawlenty has repeatedly said he was against the bank bailouts that some say helped save many of the member firms of the lobbying organization he just joined. "I don't think the government should bail out Wall Street or the mortgage industry or for that matter any other industry," he told Fox News in January 2011 when questioned about his final position on the matter, which appeared to shift at times.

Last summer, when the banking industry - and the Financial Services Roundtable, specifically - was lobbying Washington to raise the debt ceiling to avert a default, Mr. Pawlenty was taking a different tack.

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase had called a potential default "catastrophic." Mr. Pawlenty's view? "Well, we don't know that," he said when asked on MSNBC about the many dire predictions of the fallout of a default. He suggested that Republicans play chicken with the Democrats, questioning the very premise that the country was on the verge of default. "I hope and pray and believe they should not raise the debt ceiling," he told voters in Iowa.

And while Wall Street may like - some say love - the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, Mr. Pawlenty has a starkly different view.

"I opposed his appointment last time, so it wouldn't be hard for me to oppose his reappointment next time, and I don't think he should continue in that position," he told CNBC in June 2011.

And then there is his public view of President Obama, who, depending on which poll you believe, has a chance of still being president and regulating the industry that Mr. Pawlenty now represents. "President Obama isn't as bad as people say, he's actually worse," Mr. Pawlenty declared at the Republican National Convention as national co-chairman of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He is leaving that post to take the new job. Now, in his new role representing the banking industry, there are even odds, if not better, that Mr. Pawlenty will have to work with an Obama administration. Those will be some fun meetings.

So how exactly was it that Mr. Pawlenty, who has no financial industry background, got the job?

He declined to comment for this column.

Despite Mr. Pawlenty's thinking on certain Wall Street issues, he has become a banking favorite over the last two years, speaking out against government regulation, and in particular, President Obama. According to Open Secrets, the top five donors to his presidential run, grouped by company, were Goldman Sachs, Moelis & Company, Wells Fargo, Capital Group Companies and Morgan Stanley. In total, he raised just over $5 million. His name recognition alone will most likely open doors in Congress, which, in the world of lobbying, is half the battle.

Steve Bartlett, the current president of the Financial Services Roundtable, who will be retiring and handing over the reins to Mr. Pawlenty, said he believed his successor was "a consensus builder," with "integrity" and was "bipartisan." He paused for a moment before acknowledging that "bipartisan certainly isn't the first word to come to mind" given the last two years ahead of the presidential election, but that Mr. Pawlenty is "bipartisan-minded." He said that "this is not a selection about who is going to be in office in the next four years."

He also pointed out that, with some important exceptions, "the fact is that the issues we deal with typically don't get up to the presidential level." (That may be true of lobbying that goes on for small amendments, but the overhaul reforms of Wall Street that were recently passed and many of which still must be enacted are on the radar of the White House, if they are not indeed driven by it.)

Before getting too far into the conversation, Mr. Bartlett warned that he was not intimately involved in the hiring process. "I was N.I.F.O. - nose in, fingers out." He described a rigorous hiring process, saying that more than 100 people had been considered for the job and at least 30 people were interviewed.

When I asked how he felt about Mr. Pawlenty's comments about the bailouts, which seem at odds with his organization, he said: "Our views are totally consistent. I don't find those views to be at odds."

But then he said, "different time, different context." He continued by describing Mr. Pawlenty as "a guy sitting outside the Beltway," who had the luxury and freedom to say how he felt.

How about Mr. Pawlenty's views on Mr. Bernanke?

"I haven't heard Tim Pawlenty on that," he said.

And what about Mr. Pawlenty's views of defaulting on the debt ceiling?

"In Washington there is an old saying, 'Where you stand depends on where you sit.' "

Sadly, no truer words have ever been said about the influence of money on our nation's capital.


LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



807 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 24, 2012 Monday 9:48 PM EST


Scott Walker to keynote New Hampshire GOP convention;
The Wisconsin governor will appear in the Granite State this weekend.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 681 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

FIRST ON THE FIX: 

* The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has canceled another week of its ad reservation in Rep. Larry Kissell's (D-N.C.) district, according to an aide who tracks media buys - another sign that Kissell faces tough odds in his reelection campaign. Republicans re-drew Kissell's district to be significantly more conservative in the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. Democrats had already canceled one week of their reservations in the district, and now they have also canceled the following week - Oct. 9-Oct. 16. They still have time reserved for the final three weeks of the campaign. "Larry Kissell is battle-tested and has won tough fights by gaining the support of Independents and Republicans," DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. "Kissell is leading in his polling and can win against Washington insider Richard Hudson, who is running a lackluster campaign and supports an agenda to end Medicare."

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

The 2012 campaign is mediocre. It just is.

GOP House majority looks safe in Fix ratings

Voters sour on their choices in 2012 election

Todd Akin relying on help from conservative rebels

As Romney stumbles, Obama regains his mojo

Mitt Romney's narrow electoral vote path explained - in 5 maps

Scott Brown's new TV ad hits Elizabeth Warren over her claim to Native American heritage

What's Scott Walker up to?

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) hit President Obama over foreign policy Monday, comparing current turmoil in the Middle East to the 1979-1980 hostage crisis in Iran. "I mean, turn on the TV and it reminds you of 1979 Tehran," Ryan said at an Ohio town hall. "They're burning our flag in capitals all around the world. ... And what is the signal the government is sending to the rest of the world?"

* More voters trust Obama over Mitt Romney to address the issues facing Medicare, according to a new USA Today/Gallup Swing States poll. By a margin of 50 percent to 44 percent, voters trust Obama more in the survey of voters in 12 key swing states. Obama's swing state margin on mirrors his national margin on the Medicare question, which is 51 percent to 43 percent over Romney. 

* The DCCC is up with its first TV ad linking a Republican candidate to Mitt Romney. In New York's 19th District, the DCCC is running an ad that says both Rep. Chris Gibson (R) and Romney "wanted to end the Medicare guarantee to pay for even more tax breaks for the wealthy." Democrat Julian Schreibman is running against Gibson. 

* Rep. Chris Murphy (D) is up with a new TV ad in the Connecticut Senate race that says Republican nominee Linda McMahon "demeaned" women as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) will keynote the New Hampshire Republican convention on Saturday. 

* Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) trails Democratic challenger Joe Garcia 50 percent to 41 percent, according to a new Democratic poll conducted for House Majority PAC and the Service Employees International Union. Obama leads Romney 54 percent to 41 percent in Florida's new 26th District, according to the Benenson Strategy Group poll conducted earlier this month. Rivera has faced ethics probes, spurring Democratic enthusiasm about the pickup opportunity. 

* Last week wasn't a good one for Romney, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said on Monday. "We had a bad week - if the election were going to be held tomorrow that would be a problem, but there's a lot of ground to cover in the next 42 days," he said, adding, "I don't think we need to overreact on this."

THE FIX MIX: 

Playing a smaller venue. 

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



808 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 24, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Why this conservative Republican supports Mr. Obama


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A14


LENGTH: 251 words


Regarding Henry Olsen's Sept. 21 Washington Forum column, "Whose vision?":

I am a lifelong conservative Republican who grew up in a large, struggling family and had to do it all myself. I have been working since I was 9. I was deeply impressed by Ayn Rand and her Objectivism but, fortunately, learned of the selfishness and coldness of her philosophy and abandoned her extremism while continuing to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit and self-reliance. However, as President Obama has said, I didn't build anything all by myself. To ignore the infrastructure that supports us all is folly.

Living in Virginia, I follow with strong interest the Senate race between Tim Kaine and George Allen, both of whom were good governors. I had not made up my mind for whom to vote until I just heard George Allen's radio ad spouting the same, trite clichés: "Stop excessive regulations and taxes on job-creating small-business owners, etc." I am a minority partner in a small business that supports the federal government, and every job we establish is created not by us but by the government.

So, in response to Mr. Olsen and his excellent presentation of common sense, I dispute only this point: "I will vote for [Mitt] Romney despite his flaws. The alternative is unacceptable. In this matter, I really have no choice."

Yes, Mr. Olsen, you do have a choice, just as I do. I will vote for Mr. Obama, a man who continues to display the decency and integrity of the kind of Republicans we all miss

J.F. Fisher, Stafford


LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



809 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 24, 2012 Monday 6:01 PM EST


Romney campaign to focus on next four years;
Mitt Romney's campaign is shifting its strategy to focus on the next four years instead of the past four, adviser Ed Gillepsie told reporters Monday.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 212 words


Mitt Romney's campaign is shifting its strategy to focus on the future, adviser Ed Gillepsie told reporters Monday.  

The Hill reports: 

"We are talking not only on the president's performance over the past four years but the cost of his policies going forward," said Romney adviser Ed Gillespie during a conference call with reporters, repeatedly emphasizing that the campaign would argue "how four more years of the last four years is not going to be good for the American people."

Part of the new strategy will be a continued focus on China. A Romney ad released Monday morning argued that "we can't afford four more" years of Obama's China policy. 

The shift comes amid polls finding that a message focused on Obama's first term is not enough to pull Romney into the lead. Even when voters think they are not better off than they were four years ago, Obama has the edge in key swing states. 

On "Fox News Sunday", the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol argued that the Obama team had done "pretty well" with the economy in the past four years. To win, he said, Romney has "got to make it a referendum on the choice about the next four years."

A week ago, Romney's camp announced a renewed focus on policy details - although he has not added more specifics to his existing proposals. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



810 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 24, 2012 Monday 1:36 PM EST


What's Scott Walker up to?;
The Wisconsin governor has become Mitt Romney's chief critic. But why?


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1231 words


In the course of the last 96 hours, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has twice gone public with his concerns about the campaign former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is running, insisting that GOP presidential nominee has to, among other things, show more passion and be more bold on the campaign trail.

"I was enthused when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan because I thought that was a signal that this guy was getting serious, he was getting bold," Walker said on Friday. "I just haven't seen that kind of passion I know that Paul has transferred over to our nominee."

Then in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday", Walker said he wanted "to see fire in the belly" of Romney, adding: "I think you've got to get off the heels and get out and charge forward."  

This isn't the first time Walker has publicly questioned the approach of the Romney campaign. Back in June at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington, Walker asserted that "[Romney's] got to have a simple message of not only why we need to replace the current occupant in the White House, but also why he would be better."

For a campaign that has struggled to stay on its preferred message over the last few weeks, Walker's latest bit of armchair quarterbacking isn't likely to elicit much positive reaction from Romney world. But, that he is willing to offer his criticism so publicly - and so close to an election - is worth further explanation.

"It's something that a number of us have been scratching our heads about for a few months," said one GOP consultant who has closely tracked Walker's career. "I don't know what the end game is here."

The simplest answer is that politicians act political. STUNNER. But, there are also a few other slightly more nuanced explanations for why Walker has emerged - or installed himself - as the elected official most willing to critique his own team.

Here are four:

1. He believes it: Walker's first few years in office suggest he is committed to principle at (almost) the expense of his job. One way of viewing his willingness to call out Romney's campaign for alleged missteps is that Walker is a true believer in the conservative cause and is simply compelled to make suggestions in hopes of helping the GOP ticket win.

2. He's protecting Paul Ryan: It's no secret that Walker and Ryan are close. (Who could forget the shot of Walker crying as Ryan spoke at the Republican National Convention last month?) In Walker's comments on Friday he all but said that Ryan was being misused by the Romney campaign and that they had to let Paul be Paul. Walker could be doing a bit of political wing man duty for Ryan here - ensuring that if Romney goes down to defeat, Ryan's 2016 prospects aren't tarnished by the loss.

3. He's protecting himself (for 2016): Walker became a major conservative hero this summer when he beat back organized labor's attempt to recall him.  And, while he has largely avoided talking openly about running for president, he's not exactly gone Sherman-eque about the possibility either. "I'd like now and into the future to play a bigger role not only in Wisconsin and the Midwest, but nationally," Walker told Politico in June. "I'd like to have an impact." Putting himself front and center as a leading critic of the way Romney is running his campaign positions Walker to be the face of the "I told you so" crowd in four years time if Romney loses. 

4. He's protecting himself (for 2014): Walker faces what will be an incredibly high profile re-election race - particularly if he continues to intimate he might run for president -  in two years time. To win, he'll need to convince the same independent/unaffiliated voters who went for him in 2010 and the 2011 recall to do so again. What better way to do that than cast yourself as the guy who told Mitt Romney he needed to run a more issue oriented, positive campaign?

What's the real reason for Walker's prominence as as a Romney critic? Probably a little bit of all four of the factors mentioned above. But whatever the reason, Walker's outspokenness has emerged as a fascinating subplot in the broader 2012 presidential race.

Obama launches '47 percent' ad: A new ad from the Obama campaign hits Romney for both his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay taxes and his own personal taxes.

The ad features the grainy hidden-camera footage of Romney speaking at a fundraiser and quotes him saying, "My job is not to worry about those people."

The narrator then chimes in: "Doesn't the president have to worry about everyone?" (Romney's campaign, for what it's worth, has noted that Romney was referring to campaign strategy and not how he would govern.)

The ad also points out that Romney paid a 14.1 percent effective tax rate in 2011 and hasn't released prior returns.

"Maybe instead of attacking others on taxes, Romney should come clean on his," the narrator says.

House Republicans launch ads in 26 districts: The National Republican Congressional Committee is up with more than $6 million worth of ads in 26 districts - the latest indication of where the battle for the House will be focused.

The new ads, first reported by Roll Call on Sunday, include nine districts Democrats currently control, 13 that are controlled by Republicans and four that were either newly created or merged by redistricting.

The ads cover a wide range of topics, from tying the Democrats in those districts to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama to their votes for Obamacare.

Fixbits:

In opposing interviews on CBS's "60 Minutes," Romney says his campaign doesn't need a turnaround and Obama hits back at Romney's foreign policy criticism by saying, "If Governor Romney is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so."

A new poll conducted for Ohio newspapers shows Obama leading in that state 51 percent to 46 percent.

Romney is up with a new ad titled "Stand Up to China."

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says last week was "probably not the best week" for Romney.

Robert Gibbs lowers the debate expectations for Obama.

Paul Ryan hits Obama on the state of the U.S. space program. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich says the Romney-Ryan plan isn't good enough either.

Bill Clinton says he doesn't know whether his wife will run for president in 2016.

A new Mason-Dixon poll in Montana shows Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) leading Sen. Jon Tester (D). 

A new ad from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) features his wife, who has been cutting her husband's hair for 20 years and says "he's cheap."

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) says he is open to addressing campaign finance reform after the election.

The campaign office of Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) was apparently vandalized this weekend, and computer hard drives were erased. 

Did Rick Perry's back problems doom his campaign? A new book seeks answers.

Must-reads:

"For Vice President, a Heartbeat Away From the Public Isn't Close Enough" - Trip Gabriel, New York Times

"An Evangelical Is Back From Exile, Lifting Romney" - Jo Becker, New York Times

"Can Romney replicate Bush's 2004 path to victory? It looks dicey." - Chris Cillizza, Washington Post

"Super PAC Influence Falls Short Of Aims" - Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal

"In Ohio county, electorate is hardened and fractured" - Joel Achenbach, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



811 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 24, 2012 Monday 12:49 PM EST


Ad Watch: Romney says Obama can't 'stand up to China';
Romney takes on China policy, again.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 85 words


Mitt Romney, "Stand Up to China"

What it says: "Obama had years to stand up to China. We can't afford four more."

What it means: Romney is clearly hoping to make China into a campaign issue; this is his second ad in recent weeks on the subject. 

Who will see it: The campaign didn't say, but the ad is likely airing in Ohio, where trade and outsourcing are a major issue. 

Factchecker: Romney's last ad on the same subject got two Pinocchios.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



812 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 24, 2012 Monday
Regional Edition


Why this conservative Republican supports Mr. Obama


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A14


LENGTH: 251 words


Regarding Henry Olsen's Sept. 21 Washington Forum column, "Whose vision?":

I am a lifelong conservative Republican who grew up in a large, struggling family and had to do it all myself. I have been working since I was 9. I was deeply impressed by Ayn Rand and her Objectivism but, fortunately, learned of the selfishness and coldness of her philosophy and abandoned her extremism while continuing to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit and self-reliance. However, as President Obama has said, I didn't build anything all by myself. To ignore the infrastructure that supports us all is folly.

Living in Virginia, I follow with strong interest the Senate race between Tim Kaine and George Allen, both of whom were good governors. I had not made up my mind for whom to vote until I just heard George Allen's radio ad spouting the same, trite clichés: "Stop excessive regulations and taxes on job-creating small-business owners, etc." I am a minority partner in a small business that supports the federal government, and every job we establish is created not by us but by the government.

So, in response to Mr. Olsen and his excellent presentation of common sense, I dispute only this point: "I will vote for [Mitt] Romney despite his flaws. The alternative is unacceptable. In this matter, I really have no choice."

Yes, Mr. Olsen, you do have a choice, just as I do. I will vote for Mr. Obama, a man who continues to display the decency and integrity of the kind of Republicans we all miss

J.F. Fisher, Stafford


LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



813 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 23, 2012 Sunday
National


How Perry Lost Edge In Bid to Be President


BYLINE: By JAY ROOT


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; THE TEXAS TRIBUNE; Pg. 31A


LENGTH: 1509 words


From Mitt Romney's slap at 47 percent of the population that he says mooches off the government to President Obama's heavily mocked quote about businesses that take too much credit for their success, gaffes are all the rage on the presidential campaign trail these days.

Invariably we are told these verbal boo-boos are bad enough to bring a presidential campaign to its knees, that somehow the blunder in question has set a new low, a dubious milestone.

Two words: Rick Perry.

I am not making light of the fallout from the nominees' recent gaffes. They surely have incurred -- or will incur -- a political cost.

The point is that, having covered the Texas governor's botched presidential campaign from mid-August 2011 through mid-January 2012, I have witnessed the birth of a whole new level of faux pas. Think of it as the political equivalent of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Super-Gaffe, if you will.

It is not just the magnitude of Perry's face plants that make them so different from what we are seeing out of the Romney and Obama camps. It is the reasons they happened in the first place.

Despite the grass-roots enthusiasm and financial support that greeted Perry when he joined the race last year, he was not anywhere near ready for the presidential campaign spotlight. His late entry and lack of debate experience clearly hurt him.

What is not widely known is that Perry, 62, had major health issues too -- a serious but previously undiagnosed sleep disorder that was discovered just as the front-runner label was slipping from his hands, and painful sensations in his leg and foot that also kept him up at night.

By the time he started sleeping again and feeling better, all of the efforts to right the ship -- like firing his top political adviser and bringing in new hands -- had unleashed so much internal dysfunction that the campaign split into rival factions, made up of people who could not stand to be in the same room together.

At this point you may be wondering why anyone would write a book about a presidential candidate who made the word ''oops'' his calling card. The short answer is that ''Oops! A Diary From the 2012 Campaign Trail'' began not as a book but as a diary -- a behind-the-scenes look at life on a modern presidential campaign. The ''embed'' reporters. The bus. The way news is really gathered in the age of Twitter and YouTube.

I had every reason to believe I was covering the eventual Republican nominee when Perry immediately shot to the top of the polls in the summer of 2011. By the time his campaign ground to a halt five months later, the words of the Democratic strategist James Carville, spoken on CNN in January, seemed like the most apt description of what I had witnessed: ''the worst presidential campaign/candidate in American history.''

A Front-Runner Stumbles

I like to say that going to a debate is the worst way to actually cover it as a reporter. We don't get anywhere near the studio, where you could, say, gauge the audience reaction.

We're stuck in the press filing center, generally a sea of banquet tables with chairs and power strips, with strategically placed televisions all around so you can watch the debate -- only in far worse conditions than the average voter sitting in his living room.

I hate Orlando, by the way. It's like Vegas without gambling or scantily clad women. Sprawling hotel complexes. Flip-flop-wearing Disney-goers. I shudder. But I'll say this: The Fox News-Google debate there on Sept. 22, 2011 had the best press filing center I've ever been in.

The décor screamed Google: multicolored beanbag chairs, plush white wall-to-wall carpet, leather furniture with Google-colored pillows, modular plastic chairs and plexiglass tables. They had a popcorn machine. A huge smoothie bar. Hamburgers with bacon strips. Pasta. All kinds of drinks and candy. A YouTube Live Streaming Lounge, inside a big red tent set up inside a room in the cavernous Orlando convention center.

Arlette Saenz, a reporter for ABC News, was popping gummy bears and drinking Cokes and hadn't had much sleep, as usual, so she was bouncing off the multicolored walls. We took a seat in view of the smoothie bar. ''This is boring,'' she said about 20 minutes in. I nodded as I polished off my Google bacon cheeseburger. When political junkies are bored by a presidential debate, you know it's bad. But the fireworks started about 10 minutes later, first on Social Security and then immigration.

Under pressure from Romney, Perry delivered a truly awful answer about why he believes so strongly that Texas should let illegal immigrant teenagers pay lower in-state tuition rates. In a sort of irritated tone, he said anyone who opposes that policy didn't ''have a heart.'' I thought that was noteworthy, but Twitter told me it was bigger -- monumental -- like his Bernanke ''treasonous'' thing.

People were talking about it in the elevators. It was radioactive. And that's not all they talked about in the elevators. Perry suffered some kind of spell onstage when he tried to launch an attack on Romney for being a flip-flopper. He got tongue-tied; incoherent, really.

When that happened, Arlette turned to me, dumbfounded. ''Was he like this in Texas?'' she said. All the Perry embeds look to me from time to time to explain the governor. I usually can oblige. Not this time.

''Honey, we're in uncharted waters,'' I said.

Arlette quickly transcribed the audio. Watching the video is painful, but seeing the words written out demonstrates the depth of the flub: ''I think Americans just don't know sometimes which Mitt Romney they're dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it before he was before the social programs from the standpoint of he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against Roe v. Wade -- he was for Race to the Top -- he's for Obamacare and now he's against it -- I mean we'll wait until tomorrow and see which Mitt Romney we're really talking to tonight.''

The next day I didn't have to wonder what to write. Just a straight-up reaction piece to Perry's awful performance. The pundit class unloaded. William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, penned a special editorial entitled ''Yikes.'' ''No front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry,'' Kristol said. ''It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him.''

It feels like the air has gone out of the ''front-runner'' bubble.

'Our Guy Isn't Sleeping'

Trouble had announced itself in Perry's hotel room on the morning of that Orlando debate.

''I didn't sleep a wink,'' he said to his travel aide, Clint Harp.

A Republican Florida state committeewoman, Liliana Ros, was shocked by Perry's apparent physical distress when she greeted him during a commercial break at the debate. ''He grabbed my hand and held on to it,'' Ros told reporters. ''His hand was so cold, like ice. And he was sweating. I don't know what it was, but something was definitely wrong.''

It showed onstage. Toward the end of the debate, Perry had scrawled down on a sheet of paper an attack line he wanted to use against the ever-waffling Mitt Romney. But then he proceeded to botch it, turning his rambling answer into a late-night comedian's dream.

Back at headquarters in Austin, Perry's health -- his severe lack of sleep, mainly -- became a central focus. ''Our guy's not sleeping,'' Dave Carney said in the office in a brainstorming session about the governor's condition.

Perry had kept in touch with his medical team, and by early October, days after the Florida fiasco, he had urgently consulted sleep specialists. After conducting overnight tests on Perry, they produced a rather startling diagnosis: He had sleep apnea, and it had gone undetected for years, probably decades. The ailment, which affects one in 10 men worldwide and becomes more common as people age, causes loud snoring and temporary lapses in breathing that disrupt normal sleep.

After the diagnosis, doctors prescribed for Perry a machine known as a CPAP -- short for continuous positive airway pressure -- which exerts air into the nose and mouth through a plastic mask to ensure constant breathing.

Perry, almost unreasonably fit for his age, had considered himself a light sleeper his entire adult life. He also was an obsessive exercise nut. It's how he kept some balance in an otherwise stressful life.

The way he told it later, all that rigorous physical activity over the year had kept his sleep apnea in check. Then back surgery he underwent in July 2011 sidelined him, kept him out of the gym, and he went from light sleeper to insomniac.

''Once he got to exercising again, I think he had more energy and started to get back into the swing of things, but by then it was too late,'' a top campaign aide said. ''The narrative had already been set. He was becoming an afterthought.''

Jay Root is the author of ''Oops! A Diary From the 2012 Campaign Trail,'' from which this article is adapted. It will be published by Byliner on Sunday.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/us/how-rick-perry-lost-his-edge-in-bid-to-be-president.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



814 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 23, 2012 Sunday


Romney Blames Obama for His Campaign Challenges


BYLINE: ASHLEY PARKER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 978 words



HIGHLIGHT: Asked why he was behind in some polls, Mitt Romney accused the Obama campaign of distorting his record. He also attributed his light campaign schedule to the president's decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system.


DENVER - Mitt Romney, who has been criticized by members of his party in recent weeks for not campaigning aggressively enough and who trails President Obama in polls in most swing states, placed the blame for his campaign's struggles squarely on the president himself Sunday afternoon.

Speaking to reporters as his private charter plane flew from Los Angeles to Denver, Mr. Romney blamed his relatively languid campaign schedule - five public events in the past seven days, compared with 11 fund-raisers - on the president's decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system four years ago, and criticized Mr. Obama for, he said, "trying to fool people into thinking that I think things I don't."

Asked why he was behind in the polls in most swing states, Mr. Romney accused the Obama campaign of distorting his record.

"I think that the president's campaign has focused its advertising in many cases on very inaccurate portrayals of my positions," he said. "They've been very aggressive in their attacks both on a personal basis and on a policy basis. I think as time goes on, people will realize that those attacks are not accurate and we'll be able to have a choice which is based upon each other's accurate views for the future of country."

Specifically, Mr. Romney pointed to the auto industry bailout, his tax plan and his position on abortion as three areas in which the president had tried to misrepresent his position.

"When he says I was in favor of liquidating the automobile industry, nothing could be further from the truth," Mr. Romney said. "My plan was to rebuild the auto industry and take it through bankruptcy so that could happen, and by the way he doesn't mention he took them through bankruptcy."

Mr. Romney did oppose the auto industry bailout, instead lobbying for a process of "managed bankruptcy," which he said would have allowed the car companies to restructure and emerge stronger than before. Though Mr. Obama did ultimately take General Motors and Chrysler through managed bankruptcies, the president argues that the process would not have been possible without his decision to inject the companies with billions in taxpayer money - an intervention Mr. Romney opposed.

Mr. Romney also said that the Obama campaign had incorrectly characterized his position on abortion.

In his ads on abortion "he says I'm opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest and the life of the mother," Mr. Romney said. "That's wrong."

Though Mr. Romney is opposed to abortion, he has said previously that he allows for exceptions in the case of rape and incest, as well as when the mother's life is at risk. His running mate, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, however, does not support such exceptions.

Standing in the back of his plane, and pressed by reporters to explain his lagging position in many polls, Mr. Romney - whose campaign recently said that they would not allow fact-checkers to dictate their campaign - found himself calling for fact-checkers.

"I understand that politics is politics but in the past, when you've had an ad which has been roundly pointed out to be wrong, you take it out and you correct it and you put something back on," Mr. Romney said.

"He keeps running these things even though he knows they're wrong and saying them in rallies even though he knows they're wrong."

Mr. Obama's campaign took exception with Mr. Romney's comments, accusing him of shirking the blame for his campaign's recent struggles.

"It's odd that Mitt Romney, a former C.E.O., won't take personal responsibility for his campaign's troubles," said Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman, in an e-mail statement. "And it certainly takes a lot of chutzpah for him - after his campaign bragged that it wouldn't be dictated by fact-checkers - to shed crocodile tears over a legitimate discussion of his record and policies. Here are the facts: If Mitt Romney had had his way and we'd let Detroit go bankrupt, G.M. and Chrysler would no longer be in business today. He would raise taxes on middle class families to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. And he endorsed the Republican Party platform that would ban abortion even in the cases of rape and incest."

She added: "If he's so offended by his own positions, maybe he shouldn't have taken them in the first place."

Mr. Romney also criticized the president for opting out of the federal campaign finance system four years ago. Now, both Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama have opted out, a decision Mr. Romney blames for his light campaign schedule, which has come under scrutiny by fellow Republicans.

"I'd far rather be spending my time out in the key swing states campaigning, door-to-door if necessary, but in rallies and various meetings, but fund-raising is a part of politics when your opponent decides not to live by the federal spending limits," he said.

Asked if voters should expect to see Mr. Romney become more aggressive in coming days, he demurred: "You'll see what you're going to see," he said. "I'm not going to lay out precisely the nature of our campaign strategy." But he did say that he expected the upcoming debates to help crystallize his case to the voting public.

"The president describes my direction in a way that is simply inaccurate and I will describe my own direction," he said. "I think as we have the debates we'll get a chance for people to hear our distinctions quite clearly and they'll make their choice as to what they think is the right course forward."

And as for his trailing poll numbers in most battleground states, the former governor appeared relaxed and unworried.

"I'll either go up or I'll go down," he said.



LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



815 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 23, 2012 Sunday


What's Wrong With Pennsylvania?


BYLINE: THOMAS B. EDSALL


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1831 words



HIGHLIGHT: This was supposed to be a swing state, with the Republican presidential candidate threatening to win for the first time since 1988. It hasn't worked out that way.


Allentown, Pa.

On June 30, 2011, an enthusiastic Mitt Romney arrived here in the heart of the Lehigh Valley determined to make Pennsylvania a presidential battleground state.

Standing before the closed Allentown Metal Works, Romney told reporters: "The president is a nice guy and I know he's trying, but he doesn't understand how the economy works" - a line that Romney later observed had resonated with focus groups.

A key assumption underpinned Romney's appearance in Allentown - that the working class whites who once dominated this great industrial center would back the Republican nominee.

Pennsylvania demographics suggested that the state was fair game for Republicans. Seniors are a key source of support for Romney, and the state has a higher percentage of voters over the age of 65, 15.6 percent, than the country as a whole (13.3 percent). Pennsylvania is substantially whiter, at 79.2 percent, than the rest of the nation (63.4 percent). And unemployment in Pennsylvania matches the national rate at 8.1 percent.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns made significant investments in advertising in Pennsylvania. The pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, and two conservative PACs, Crossroads GPS and Americans For Prosperity, have together spent a total of $9.7 million; the Obama campaign and its allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action, have spent $8 million.

By the end of August, however, ad buying stopped. The Romney campaign effectively conceded the state.

In yielding Pennsylvania to President Obama, Romney has raised the stakes in Ohio and Florida, almost certainly making both states must win contests if he is to reach 270 Electoral College votes. Real Clear Politics has Obama ahead by a 1.9 point average in the eight most recent Florida polls and by an average of 4.1 percent in the seven most recent Ohio polls.

Romney's failure to gain traction in Pennsylvania sheds light on his struggles in other states with similar demographics, including Michigan and Ohio. The rapidly changing composition of the electorate here in Lehigh County, 60 miles north of Philadelphia - an area described by the Census as the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ Metropolitan Statistical Area - parallels similar shifts taking place in other regions of the country.

Lehigh Valley is a case study in the rapidly multiplying problems of the Republican Party, its successes in 2010 notwithstanding. From 1968 to 1988, Lehigh County was solidly Republican, voting for Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey 50-46 (with 4 percent for the segregationist George C. Wallace); for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter, 53-36; and for George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, 56-43.

In every presidential election since 1988, however, the Democratic nominee has carried Lehigh County, culminating in Obama's 2008 57-42 victory.

There are conservatives and Romney supporters here, but they are no longer plentiful and they are not optimistic about Romney's presidential chances.

When I met Kevin Balzer, a Romney supporter who is a Mack Truck supervisor, I asked him why his state looks likely to back Obama. "People are stupid," he said.

City and state officials, he went on,

eliminated civics from our curriculum. The students don't know about civics, they don't know about our history, our government, our constitution. Politicians say they are going to give people things for free to get elected. That is what's happening in Pennsylvania, especially in Lehigh Valley.

Balzer added that "the white guys got pushed out" of Allentown and neighboring communities, in part by a wave of Hispanic immigration. Balzer, who joined the exodus to areas outside of Allentown, said he and others want to "get away from the whole erosion of the country."

From 1998 to 2011, the number of registered Republicans in Lehigh County fell from 75,099 to 73,857, while Democrats shot up from 78,002 to 107,594.

From 2000 to 2010, Lehigh County went from 83.2 percent non-Hispanic white to 70.7; from 3.6 percent African American to 7.7 percent; and, most significantly, from 10.2 percent Hispanic to 19.5 percent. In addition to the Latino immigrants, many relatively affluent whites have moved into the immediate area from New York, New Jersey and the Philadelphia suburbs, bringing with them Democratic voting habits.

Much of the Hispanic growth has been concentrated in Allentown, the county seat. From 2000 to 2010, the white population of Allentown fell, shrinking to 43.2 percent in 2010 from 64.4 percent a decade earlier. During the same period, the Hispanic population nearly doubled, growing from 24.4 percent in 2000 to 42.8 percent in 2010.

The political consequences of recent population trends have been dramatic.

William L. Heydt, a Republican, held the mayor's office in Allentown from 1990 to 2002, when he retired. He decided to run again in 2005. He only got 41 percent of the vote. Allentown voters, he told me, came to the polls "by the busload, pulled the D lever, and had no idea who they were voting for." Many, Heydt said, "were Hispanic, a lot African American."

Julio Guridy, a native of the Dominican Republic who is now chairman of the Allentown City Council, sees a growing, vibrant and, not least of all, Democratic city.

"We have seen an influx from New York and New Jersey, particularly after 9/11. This is a very good place to live," Guridy told me. "America is a wonderful place." He is one of two Latinos on the six-member city council, all of whom are Democrats, as is the mayor, Ed Pawlowski, the man who beat Heydt in 2005.

Even if there were a higher percentage of working class whites in the region, Romney would have faced an uphill struggle. A new survey of 2,501 adults, "Beyond Guns and God: Understanding the Complexities of the White Working Class in America," published on Sept. 20 by the Public Religion Research Institute, reveals clearly that the white working class (broadly defined) cannot, at present, be described as a secure Republican constituency.

The P.R.R.I. study focuses on a group it defines as non-Hispanic whites without a four-year college degrees who are paid by the hour or by the job. That's roughly one-third (36%) of all Americans. The study shows that Romney's nationwide 48-35 advantage among these voters masks crucial regional differences.

The reason Romney has a strong, 13-point edge among all white working class voters, according to the P.R.R.I. findings, is that in the South his margin is huge. In the rest of the country, the white working class is much more closely divided.

Among southern working class whites, Romney leads by 40 points, 62-22, an extraordinary gap.

The story in the rest of the country is different. In the West, where Colorado and Nevada are battleground states, Romney leads by a modest 5 points, 46-41. In the Northeast, which Obama is expected to sweep, except perhaps for New Hampshire, Romney holds a 4-point advantage among working class whites, 42-38. In the Midwest, where Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin are in play, Obama actually leads among working class whites by 8 points (44-36).

There is a noticeable lack of zeal for either Romney or Obama among these voters. Only 66 percent of white working-class Americans said they are certain to vote, compared to 87 percent of college-educated whites and 74 percent of African Americans.

Two Democratic operatives active in non-presidential campaigns in Pennsylvania argue that Romney just does not sell with working class whites. Doc Sweitzer, a political consultant whose clients include Kathleen Kane, the Democratic nominee for Attorney General, told me that cities and towns throughout the state "have all been hit by these corporate raider types" who buy and sell businesses in a manner similar to Romney's former firm, Bain Capital. "He just doesn't hunt here."

Steve Murphy, a media consultant working on congressional campaigns in Pennsylvania, characterized Romney's problem somewhat differently: "I don't think so much the argument is that he is anti-worker. It's just that they just don't like him. He seems like he is completely disconnected from people who have to work for a living."

I interviewed George Taylor, a purchasing agent for Mack Truck, which remains a manufacturing presence in the state, as he shopped at a Wal-Mart near Allentown. He said Romney lives in "la-la-land. He just cares about big business. He doesn't care about the small person. He just wants to give tax breaks to the rich and the heck with everybody else."

Romney's relatively poor showing among working class whites outside the South supports the argument that the Republican nominee is having a hard time connecting with some of the voters he needs to win. His problems reinforce the privately voiced fears of Republican operatives, as well as the openly voiced criticisms of the Romney campaign by primary opponents like Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum.

The hope harbored by Republican political professionals - that Obama was sufficiently unpopular among non-college whites to make up for Romney's shortcomings - has failed to take concrete form. The trouble Romney finds himself in today also suggests that the barrage of early advertising by the Obama campaign and allied groups attacking Bain Capital has proven to be a successful tactic, at least so far.

With the election six weeks away, poll after poll shows Pennsylvania in Obama's column. On Sept. 15, the Philadelphia Inquirer had Obama ahead by an 11-point margin, 50-39. On Sept. 18, the Muhlenberg College/Allentown Morning Call state poll showed Obama up by nine points, 50-41. On Sept. 21, Rasmussen Reports found that Obama led by 12 points, 51-39.

Christopher Borick, a political scientist who is the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, told me that the Romney campaign has clearly "made a calculation that Pennsylvania a might be a bit of fool's gold in terms of time and energy."

"On paper," Borick said, the state's relatively large number of white working class voters has made it an appealing target for the Romney campaign, but

Romney has a lack of connection with those voters and the Obama campaign's attacks were fairly productive in driving a wedge between working class voters and Romney.

In 2008, when I traveled back and forth across Pennsylvania, Obama and McCain signs dotted lawns throughout the state, clearly signaling the political leanings of different neighborhoods in suburbs and small towns. Now Obama and Romney signs are few and far between.

"Pennsylvania is no longer one of the big battleground states," Borick said. "We had the big-three group of battleground states - Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. There are only two left. Pennsylvania is gone."

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book "The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics," which was published earlier this year.



LOAD-DATE: September 24, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



816 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 23, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Romneyteam is de[#xfb01]ant, realistic


BYLINE: Dan Balz;Philip Rucker


SECTION: A section; Pg. A08


LENGTH: 1904 words


BOSTON - After one of their worst weeks of the general election campaign, Mitt Romney and his advisers are scrambling to refocus their message and make up ground lost to President Obama in several battleground states.

The mood around Romney's Boston campaign headquarters with just over six weeks until Election Day is defiantly upbeat in the face of a series of setbacks. "Given everything we've gone through, everybody wants to count this guy out," said Neil Newhouse, the Romney campaign's pollster. "And yet the poll numbers don't do that. The poll numbers put him right in the middle of this."

Romney brushed aside questions about the state of his campaign in an interview scheduled to air Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes." Asked by anchor Scott Pelley how he planned to turn around his campaign, Romney responded: "Well, it doesn't need a turnaround. We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president [of] the United States."

But the sensibility in Boston is also decidedly realistic. Some Romney advisers acknowledge that the burden is on the candidate and those around him to quiet doubters inside their own party and elsewhere, and to demonstrate that they have a compelling message, along with a strategy and the discipline to execute it.

The coming week will test whether Romney's campaign can do something they've struggled with for many weeks, which is to deliver a coherent and sustained message across every possible platform - in their paid advertising, in what the candidate and his running mate, Paul Ryan, say on the campaign trail, in the digital world that now helps shape the conversation, and through the many surrogates used to spread and amplify that message.

Then comes the next test, which is the first of the presidential and vice-presidential debates. Advisers to both candidates see the Oct. 3 debate in Denver as the best opportunity for Romney to force a shift in the campaign's dynamic, which has been running against the GOP nominee for the past three weeks.

Contradictory perspectives

Romney advisers now interpret the state of the race from two somewhat contradictory perspectives. On the one hand, they see national tracking polls that a week ago showed Obama in the lead immediately after his convention but that tightened dramatically after that. Other national polls give Obama a lead.

The other view of the race comes from recent polls in the battleground states that consistently show Romney running behind. Especially troubling are Obama's narrow leads in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, all vital to Romney's chances of winning. If presidential campaigns are really a series of state-by-state contests, Romney's path to 270 electoral votes is far more problematic than Obama's at this moment.

But Romney advisers see a rush to judgment about the state of the campaign by pundits and commentators, and they dismiss suggestions that the campaign has taken a decisive turn. That view is shared in Chicago among Obama's top advisers, who believe they are in a stronger position than Romney but who expect the race to be close and hard-fought until November.

"I'm realistic that Romney's had a couple of bad weeks, but there's lots of time for him to recover," said a senior Obama adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to offer an assessment of the race.

Romney advisers acknowledge two potentially significant developments during the Democratic convention that boosted the president's standing, which, if they persist, could make the challenger's path to victory more difficult.

One was a rise in enthusiasm among Democrats, who now appear as energized as Republicans. If that holds, it could change the calculus on who is likely to turn out between now and Nov. 6 in ways detrimental to Romney. Both campaigns say their get-out-the-vote machinery is ready to produce maximum turnout among their supporters.

More worrisome to Romney and the Republicans is what appears to be an unexpected shift in the public mood since the two parties completed their conventions. Although still negative overall about the direction of the country, more Americans now say things are moving in the right direction and more express optimism about the future of the economy.

Romney's advisers, like their counterparts at Obama headquarters in Chicago, are closely monitoring these attitude shifts, admitting that they aren't certain what caused them or whether they will last until November. "I think that was something they were successful with at their convention, changing the narrative a little bit about things getting better," said Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie. "I don't know if they can sustain that in the face of economic reality."

Two weeks ago, Romney's campaign was set back over a controversy about how he responded to protests in Egypt and the subsequent killing of four Americans in Libya. Romney advisers were frustrated that a succession of economic reports, all of which could be used to portray Obama's economic record as a failure, were washed away.

They included reports about the rising deficit, the poverty rate (which did not go down), manufacturing jobs (which fell) and the Federal Reserve's announcement that the economy would need sizable and indefinite help to create more jobs.

To Romney's team, this was a further sign that the fundamentals of the race leave the president in a vulnerable position - if only Romney can capitalize on those fundamentals more effectively than he has so far. That means Romney and Ryan may have to do more than they've been doing to remind voters of the current economic conditions, even as they try to explain what they would do if elected.

The 47 percent controversy

Romney advisers say they have a message plan - and the target audiences they need to attract - and will start to roll it out in the coming days. They tried to do this a week ago but were forced to spend most of the week explaining comments by Romney at a spring fundraiser, captured surreptitiously on video, in which he said the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes consider themselves victims and believe they are entitled to government support.

On Friday, Romney released hundreds of pages of his 2011 tax filings, with his campaign hoping the disclosure would finally quiet months of political controversy over his personal finances. He paid $1.9 million in taxes on $13.69 million in income, most of it from his investments, for an effective rate of 14.1 percent, according to his returns. The Obama campaign said the financials paint an incomplete picture of the wealth he amassed at Bain Capital.

Romney has tried any number of ways to elevate the campaign dialogue to his advantage, drawing a contrast between what he calls the government-centered worldview of the president and his vision for an opportunity society. But so far he's had trouble for two reasons. He hasn't found a consistent way to frame that contrast and he's been distracted, or allowed himself to be distracted, by small controversies and chaff thrown up by the opposition.

"I don't want to give them message advice," said one Obama adviser, "but I think what's hurt them most is they haven't given voters any reason to vote for Romney. The question is: Is it too late?"

Romney advisers say in the coming weeks, there will be much greater effort at supplying answers to those questions.

In Ohio, Romney plans to try to build more support among blue-collar voters by raising the economic threat of China and highlighting his trade policies cracking down on the country for intellectual-property infringement and currency manipulation. Romney plans to hammer his message about China "cheating," an aggressive stance his strategists believe will help him in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest.

Meanwhile, in Northern Virginia, a critical swing region of a key battleground state, Romney is trying to close a deficit with Obama among female voters by stressing debt and government spending issues. The campaign is airing an ad, "Dear Daughter," featuring a mother talking to her newborn about her share of the federal debt, and advisers said similar ads are scheduled in the weeks to come.

'Water is not muddy'

"It's a very, very clear contrast," said one Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely about strategy. "The water is not muddy on this. Obama has a worldview, and we've seen it through the first four years of his presidency, that every problem he encounters he solves by throwing more government money at it - whether it's health care, whether it's the stimulus, whether it's the auto bailout."

Romney's advisers say they are not expecting an instant turnaround. "We're going to stay on it and keep pounding it," Gillespie said. "It may not be that it breaks through so much as it penetrates."

Although Romney has raised huge amounts of money for the general election over the past few months, he was at a disadvantage throughout the summer because he was short on money that he could spend before he formally accepted the nomination at his convention in Tampa.

His campaign team also made the decision - questionable in the eyes of the Obama team - to spend no money on ads during either convention. They didn't have the money to spend during the Republican convention and decided whatever they spent during the Democratic convention would be washed out by the media's coverage of events in Charlotte. As a result, according to a Romney adviser, they were outspent, campaign vs. campaign, $18 million to zero during that two-week period.

But they argue that the Obama team failed during the summer to knock out Romney and that the fact that he is still standing is evidence that voters are still looking for reasons not to reelect Obama. "They wanted to settle the race by August," Gillespie said. "It didn't work."

Obama advisers argue that was never their strategy. "That wasn't the goal," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. "The goal was to lay out a vision of where we want to take the country and to set up a choice, and that's exactly what we did."

The other obstacle Romney faces is a campaign environment in which small and trivial matters can often dominate the daily discussion. Romney advisers believe Obama's campaign has been effective at feeding the media's appetite for such controversies and they recognize that avoiding those distractions or swatting them away must be an essential part of their overall strategy if they want to draw contrasts with Obama on big issues.

That leaves Romney with a full plate and little time. There is only a small percentage of voters who haven't made up their minds. Early voting starts in the battleground state of Iowa next week, and other swing states will follow in October, shrinking daily the available pool of voters who might respond to Romney's message.

Romney's advisers have drawn considerable criticism from within the Republican Party and now find themselves trying to sift through the chatter for good ideas coming from the outside while screening out the rest. But if they once thought the election would turn their way simply because of the state of the economy and the dissatisfaction with Obama, they now know they have to make a sale on Romney's behalf. Said one Romney adviser, "We have to take it to the broader argument, and that's what we're doing."

balzd@washpost.com

ruckerp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



817 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 23, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Romney wasn't responsible for outsourcing to China, though he may have profited from it


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 996 words


"I understand my opponent has been running around Ohio claiming he's going to roll up his sleeves and he's going to take the fight to China. Now, here's the thing. His experience has been owning companies that were called 'pioneers' in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China. He made money investing in companies that uprooted from here and went to China. Pioneers. Now, Ohio, you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

- President Obama,at a rally Monday in Cincinnati 

President Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio, where he responded to a tough ad by Mitt Romney about his record on China with barbed comments regarding Romney's record as an investor. The president's remarks were foreshadowed by a video released by the Obama campaign last weekend, which asserts that the GOP presidential nominee outsourced jobs to China.

This is a pretty serious charge. What's the evidence for this?

The Facts

 Obama's reference to Romney owning companies that were "pioneers" comes directly from a front-page article in The Washington Post last June.

As we have noted before, the Obama campaign has misinterpreted this article in some of its television advertising. The actual article, in fact, does not say that transfers of U.S. jobs took place while Romney ran the private equity firm of Bain Capital. Instead, it says that Bain was prescient in identifying an emerging business trend - the movement of back-office, customer service and other functions out of companies that were willing to let third parties handle that business. Several of the companies mentioned in the article have grown into major international players in the offshoring field.

However, the president put it bluntly: "You can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

The Obama campaign pointed to several Bain investments to back up this claim, but upon close examination they quickly fall apart.

In the case of Holson Burnes, a Rhode Island company that manufactured picture frame and photo albums, there is no evidence American jobs were ever shipped to China. A news article cited by the campaign actually concerns a product line that was eliminated by the company, not sending jobs overseas.

Two other companies named by the Obama campaign, Stream International and Modus Media, were mentioned in the original Post article, though no reference is made of Stream having operations in China. Modus was originally a subsidiary of Stream but became an independent company in 1998. Modus had operations that included facilities in China, but there is no evidence that U.S. jobs were shipped there while Romney was managing Bain. (In 2000, Modus closed a plant in California while opening one in Mexico, but that's not China.)

Finally, there is Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, which manufactured household appliances for a number of consumer product companies, such as Sunbeam and Hamilton Beach. But this was an investment made by two Bain affiliates, principally Brookside Capital. Brookside is in essence a hedge fund, meaning it makes passive stock investments. As the description says on the Bain Web site, "the principal investment objective of the Fund is to achieve capital appreciation through investing primarily in publicly traded equity securities globally."

Still, it is worth noting that in a 1999 Securities and Exchange Commission filing Romney was listed as "the sole shareholder, sole director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookside Inc. and thus is the controlling person of Brookside Inc." Presumably he kept a close watch on Brookside's investments, but these stock purchases still are of a different nature than Bain Capital's private-equity deals.

Global-Tech certainly benefited from outsourcing, though one news release issued by the company during the 1998-2000 period of Bain ownership bemoans the fact that Sunbeam had delayed closing its plants, forcing Global-Tech to delay expansion plans.

Moreover, Romney at the time was clearly interested in investments in China. In a transcript of a Feb. 11, 1998, panel discussion published in the Boston Globe, Romney spoke of visiting a factory - the company name is not mentioned - with earnest Chinese workers.

Romney told a somewhat similar story in a video that surfaced recently of a private fundraiser. The remarks are certainly interesting, but Bain has claimed this was an investment that did not pan out.

Without evidence of a direct investment, it seems a stretch to say Romney shipped jobs to China because of a passive investment in a foreign company. This is different from investments in which Bain Capital took a direct role in helping to manage a company.

Finally, one other example, which the Obama campaign did not highlight: Bain's 1990s investment in GT Bicycles (which assembled bicycles by taking advantage of lower-cost labor in China, Taiwan and elsewhere) indeed was an harbinger of a trend that later greatly hurt bike manufacturing in the United States. But during the period that Romney was still at Bain, GT actually added jobs in the United States.

The Pinocchio Test

The president and his campaign have gone too far here. There is no evidence that Romney, through Bain investments in which he had an active role, was responsible for shipping American jobs to China.

We would have considered this a Four-Pinocchio violation, except for the fact that some of the Bain investments (such as GT Bicycles) were a harbinger of broader trends in the transfer of American jobs overseas. Global-Tech also benefited from outsourcing, but as far as we can tell it was a passive investment by a Bain-related hedge fund.

That means Romney probably profited from outsourcing. But that is a far cry from saying that Romney himself was responsible for outsourcing American jobs to China.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



818 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 23, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Battling frontline complacency


BYLINE: Amy Gardner


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1085 words


Jim Messina, President Obama's campaign manager, spoke by conference call to more than 100 members of his Virginia staff last Sunday night to ask whether they're meeting their door-knocking, phone-calling and voter-registering goals - and to urge them: "Now is the time to push even harder."

The next night, the call was to Colorado. On Wednesday, he met privately with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill to deliver a similar message. And on Saturday, he traveled to Wisconsin to meet with field organizers, neighborhood team leaders and other volunteers there.

"Ignore the polls," Messina said on the call to Virginia, he recalled. "There are always going to be polls showing us up. There are always going to be polls showing us down. None of that matters. What matters is your voter contacts in your state."

Messina's sense of urgency might seem disingenuous in the current political environment. Republican Mitt Romney has lurched from one damaging moment to the next. Recent polls show him trailing Obama in pivotal states, including Ohio and Virginia. Privately, advisers say they believe they are winning - or at least on track to do so Nov. 6.

But if there is an ongoing danger for the president, it is that his supporters will take his apparent advantages for granted - and fail to show up on Election Day.

And so as Obama's fortunes have appeared to improve, so, too, have his campaign's efforts to convince supporters that the race is far from over. They say they have been aided by Democrats' deep concern over Romney's policies, lack of details and choice of running mate in Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). All of it has inspired Obama backers to redouble their efforts to stay engaged.

"You know what? I'm very scared about this election," said Ann Fremgen, 59, a retired teacher from Golden, Colo., one of scores of current and former teachers sporting "Educators for Obama" shirts who listened to the president speak last week against a backdrop of Colorado's Flatiron Range. "I would be devastated if Romney were elected. I think he is a total puppet. I am talking to people. I am here today. I have not volunteered yet, but I am going to."

Obama's advisers view complacency as a special threat because they have built so much of their strategy around a vast field operation to register new voters, urge them to the polls or persuade that tiny band of undecided Americans to choose Obama. The effort is entering crunch time now, with registration deadlines looming and early voting underway in a few states. But it is an effort that depends heavily on the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of field workers and volunteers across the country. Anything that could suppress that enthusiasm - like the idea that Romney is sunk - makes nerves jangle in Obama's Chicago headquarters.

And they are facing a torrent of media coverage - and comedy routines - reinforcing the narrative that momentum favors Obama. "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart won't stop talking about Clint Eastwood's now-infamous monologue with a chair. Pundits have declared a recent Politico piece about dissent within the Romney campaign tantamount to an "obituary." And most recently, the news and late-night shows have endlessly played a newly uncovered video clip of Romney declaring that nearly half of Americans "believe they are victims" and that "the government has a responsibility to take care of them."

Worse for Obama, the political activists who make up his field operation pay more attention to this stuff than the electorate overall.

"Though [Romney] is melting down, overconfidence is dangerous," Bill Burton, who leads an independent super PAC supporting Obama, said in a tweet this week. Although Burton has welcomed attention on Romney's woes - his committee, Priorities USA, put up a TV ad within 24 hours criticizing the video remarks - he also claims to be certain that the race will remain close and that Obama's fortunes could turn as quickly as Romney's seemed to.

Such urgency has been apparent in the sprawling crowds Obama has drawn to political rallies in Colorado, Ohio, Florida and Virginia in recent weeks. But it may also be at least partly the fruits of rhetorical seeds planted by the campaign and his allies.

Despite their fundraising prowess, Obama advisers have emphasized the financial advantage they expect Romney - and particularly his independent Republican supporters - to parlay into an outmatched ad war on the airwaves.

"These folks have super PACs that are writing $10 million checks and have the capacity to just bury us under the kind of advertising that we've never seen before," Obama told about 200 high-dollar donors at a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on Tuesday night.

That messaging seems to be working - despite the emergence of more and more evidence that the Republican spending advantage is not moving the needle much in some of the most hard-fought states in the country, including North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The Obama team also has been relentless in pushing out the notion of the stark choice voters face this fall - the idea that a Romney win would set the nation back, while a second term for Obama would keep the country moving ahead.

Jane Gouveia, 59, a property manager and an Obama volunteer from Lakewood, Colo., practically recited the Obama campaign's alarmist message as she left his recent outdoor rally in Golden on a sunny September afternoon. Gouveia also said she is convinced that Democrats face an extraordinary opponent in the Romney fundraising juggernaut, a fact that has compelled her to volunteer one day a week at a local Obama office. "There's no way we can be complacent!" she said. "The amount of money that's being spent to distort public opinion compels me into action."

There is an irony to the fact that Obama's team is now worried that too much confidence could keep supporters at home when, just a few weeks ago, much of the talk was about an enthusiasm gap between the two parties. Then, pundits wondered if Democrats were unexcited enough by Obama's leadership to stay home; now, the purported concern is that they are so sure he'll win that their effort isn't needed.

"If you just think of the things that happened in the last 10 days or so, there's a lot more time for a lot more developments," Burton said. "Another hidden tape, another foreign-policy moment, and some big moments, too, like the debates. So everything can change in a second in this race."

gardnera@washpost.com

Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



819 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 23, 2012 Sunday 2:21 AM EST


If you love political ads, 2012 is your year. Big time.;
The explosion of political ads in swing states is a remarkable sight to see.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


LENGTH: 321 words


If you love watching political ads on television - who doesn't?! - then the 2012 campaign is something of a golden age for you.

The number of TV ads being run in the presidential race has soared in virtually every swing state, according to new analysis from the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG).   

Take Ohio. Between April and September 2008, 42,827 ads were run by both parties  combined in the Buckeye State.  In 2012, there have already been almost 51,000 Republican ads and 64,000 Democrats ones - a total of 114,840 TV commercials run in Ohio alone.  That's almost two-and-a-half times as many ads as 2008 in the state.

In Florida, Republicans had run 3,309 ads at this point in 2008; they've run 50,664 in 2012. In Virginia, Democrats had run 6,300 ads by mid-September 2008 while they had run almost 49,000 by that same point in 2012.

The story is the same in virtually every swing state with the exception of Wisconsin, where far more ads had been run by both parties at this point in 2008 than today - a fascinating factoid given that President Obama is headed to the state tomorrow and Republicans continue to believe they can win the Badger State.

There are two main reason for the proliferation of ads as compared to 2008.

First, neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney opted into the public financing system for the general election (as John McCain did in 2008), meaning that they were and are free to raise and spend hundreds of millions on ads.

Second, the emergence of super PACs and other outside spending groups in the 2012 election provides a stark contrast with the playing field in 2008 when Obama purposely worked to keep money from Democratic outside entities and almost no conservative groups rode to the rescue of campaign finance reform minded McCain.

Regardless of the reasoning, the data is fascinating. The full CMAG chart of ads being run in swing states is below. (Click on the chart for a bigger image)


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



820 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 23, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


Clint Eastwood's not out of the game


BYLINE: Geoff Boucher


SECTION: STYLE; Pg. T08


LENGTH: 1572 words


Mileage and misadventure leave their marks, but we don't always notice the damage right away. Last Monday, for instance, Clint Eastwood had a realization that stopped him in his tracks just outside his bungalow on the Warner Bros. lot.

"Son of a gun," the 82-year-old muttered as he leaned over his beloved 1992 GMC Typhoon and dragged an index finger over the mysterious inch-long scratch marring the forest-green paint just above the grill.

A little later, sitting among the brown-leather shadows of his office, Eastwood seemed considerably less concerned about any dents in his reputation after his eccentric, meandering speech at the Republican National Convention late last month.

"I didn't want to do the usual teleprompter thing. . . . I didn't know what the hell I was going to do," the genial star said of his spur-of-the-moment decision to use an empty chair as a prop representing President Obama. "If I had more time I would have organized more. Maybe, but I don't know."

As Eastwood related his tales of Tampa, he nodded to the couch cushion next to him for effect even though it wasn't empty - it was occupied by Robert Lorenz, the director and co-producer of "Trouble With the Curve." The two have worked together since 1994, and when Eastwood said the Republican leadership "probably had a little apoplexy" during the speech, a winking Lorenz said he could feel their pain.

"That kind of sums up what it's like to direct Clint Eastwood," Lorenz deadpanned. "You never know what's going to come out. But at least you have an advantage of having an editor afterward."

The two laughed together, but during the interview there were moments when Lorenz's tight grin looked suspiciously like the silver-medalist smiles you see at the Olympics. If that was indeed the case it would be understandable - Eastwood's screwball speech might be a strike against the new movie "Trouble With the Curve."

The movie stars Eastwood as the cantankerous Gus Lobel, a baseball scout who may be in the last inning of his storied career as his eyesight goes out. He needs help, but it comes from the most unlikely source: his estranged daughter, Mickey, played by three-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams.

The tightly wound Mickey is poised to claim a corner office in her elite Atlanta law firm, but she risks that by following her dad to the bleachers of a North Carolina ballpark; the risk might be worth it if she can finally unravel the reason her widower father abruptly exiled her from his life years earlier. Justin Timberlake, John Goodman, Robert Patrick and Matthew Lillard also star in the film, scripted by newcomer Randy Brown.

No one is swinging for the fence more than Lorenz. The Chicago native has been the good soldier at Eastwood's side since coming on as an assistant director on "The Bridges of Madison of County," and although he received two Oscar nominations as Eastwood's producer ("Mystic River" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" were both up for best picture), this new project is a special moment - "Curve" is his feature-film directorial debut.

For years, Lorenz has spied one thing when he's looked to the horizon of his career: a waiting director's chair. The 45-year-old Chicago native said this script, with a mix of humor and heartache as well as themes of career pressure and family fractures, was the ideal project.

Even better, Brown's script presented a central role for a maverick spirit of advanced age and chronically bad attitude - in other words, a fastball down the middle for Eastwood the actor. The star was once the rangy, grizzled symbol of the Old West loner, then later the scowling agent of urban street retribution, but now he is the embodiment of coiled geriatric rage.

Eastwood last appeared onscreen in 2008 in "Gran Torino" as Walt Kowalski, another man staring into the twilight with a scowl and clenched fists. "Get off my lawn," Kowalski snarled, adding a surprise late-career entry to the Eastwood catchphrase collection.

"There are certain things people enjoy seeing Clint do on the screen," Lorenz said. "You can make the characters different - and they are different - but there is a quality to the character that people enjoy seeing up on the screen, of course, so you don't want to run from that."

Eastwood punctuated Lorenz's thought: "They enjoy my unpleasantness."

He might be on to something with that. "Gran Torino," directed by Eastwood, had a production budget of $33 million and went on to gross $270 million worldwide. But the longtime box-office hero isn't motivated by commercial imperatives, and most people (himself included) expected it would be his last screen appearance considering the recent career emphasis and vigor he's found in directing. With "Curve," he has acted in five films since 2000, but in that same window he has directed 11 feature films, with several gaining serious critical accolades and major trophy attention.

Eastwood is even less interested in acting in movies that he's not directing. The last time the star appeared in front of a camera on another director's set? Wolfgang Petersen's "In the Line of Fire" in 1993, which underlines the gesture of support Eastwood made to support Lorenz's debut effort.

"Trouble With the Curve" finds its setting and setup in the career of Eastwood's Lobel, a scout for the Atlanta Braves who is considered a legend and/or antique, depending on whom you ask and their age. The movie celebrates the metrics of "The Natural" and "Field of Dreams" - soulfulness, grit and respect for tradition matter as much as stolen bases - and that would seem to make it a rebuttal to last year's "Moneyball," which suggested that judging players by stats is the populist solution to clubhouse celebrity and cronyism.

Lorenz and Eastwood don't see this story as a sports movie - there are no game scenes, really, of any length.

"When I first saw it was a baseball movie, I was not that excited," Eastwood said. "But then I read it and saw that really that this wasn't a sports movie at all. And then I thought it was a perfect opportunity. I had no doubt he'd do a terrific job, and he absolutely did."

Lorenz added key scenes that weren't in the script, such as some evocative dream sequences of intimidating horse hooves bearing down on one character, as well as a flashback scene that shows a harrowing moment in Lobel family history in which a younger Eastwood gives a beat-down to a threatening stranger. (The director manipulated footage from the 1982 tech thriller "Firefox.")

The most evocative scene is when Eastwood's character visits the tombstone of his wife and, with wrenching authenticity, lets loose a tear-soaked apology. The director said his star not only delivered a heart-grabbing performance but did it after paring the scene on the page, where there was just "too much going on."

Early in the film, the difficulties of aging are announced in audacious fashion: Not many films would spend a good long visit on a man standing in his bathroom waiting to urinate and scolding and mocking his uncooperative system. It's not your usual "senior moment" humor, but Lorenz said it was essential to show that Hollywood's representation of aging is now beyond walkers and bingo scenes.

For moviegoers who have seen Eastwood talk to a chair in recent weeks, the new film offers the chance to add a headstone to that list of senior touchstones. Late-night show hosts are getting Christmas early perhaps.

But how about Lorenz? He was listening to the GOP convention speech on the radio, so he was especially confused when Eastwood veered off into the sight gag of speaking to an empty chair like some sort of mash-up of "Face the Nation" and "Harvey."

Was he distressed later about the possible effects on his film? Lorenz hesitated, and Eastwood filled the space. "He was thinking maybe we shouldn't release this movie," the actor deadpanned as he leaned back on the couch and balanced one foot on the edge of the squat coffee table.

The response came from the not-empty seat next to him on the couch. "I've learned from Clint over the years that there really isn't any such thing as bad publicity, and he's going to do what he does and go out there and be himself. Clint people love Clint, and that's not changing, and so it'll all be fine." After a beat he added: "But actually this was all an awful experience, and I don't ever want to work with Clint again."

It was all clubhouse banter, verbal backslaps and eye-pokes. More than a few viewers of the GOP convention wondered if Eastwood was slipping in his health or his engagement, but during the interview there was no hesitation in his thoughts or any doubt in his eyes. There was also zero interest in the opinion of Twitter writers or the judgment of the political punditry. He did reveal that he had intended to tack on another idea to his speech: He wanted to remind voters that Republican nominee Mitt Romney should be shown the door after four years if "he isn't getting the job done either."

The off-the-script Eastwood smiled, enjoying his trickster role, but then he grew serious talking about the thing that keeps him moving forward in a career that began several generations ago. "Every picture takes on a life of its own, and sometimes you can point to the spot in it where it happens. It's fun," he said. "You always learn something new about yourself every time, and sometimes about everybody else, too."

- Los Angeles Times

Trouble With the Curve

opened Friday at area theaters.


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



821 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 23, 2012 Sunday
Met 2 Edition


Romneyteam is deï¬ant, realistic


BYLINE: Dan Balz;Philip Rucker


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A08


LENGTH: 1892 words


DATELINE: BOSTON


BOSTON - After one of their worst weeks of the general election campaign, Mitt Romney and his advisers are scrambling to refocus their message and make up ground lost to President Obama in several battleground states.

The mood around Romney's Boston campaign headquarters with just over six weeks until Election Day is defiantly upbeat in the face of a series of setbacks. "Given everything we've gone through, everybody wants to count this guy out," said Neil Newhouse, the Romney campaign's pollster. "And yet the poll numbers don't do that. The poll numbers put him right in the middle of this."

Romney brushed aside questions about the state of his campaign in an interview scheduled to air Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes." Asked by anchor Scott Pelley how he planned to turn around his campaign, Romney responded: "Well, it doesn't need a turnaround. We've got a campaign which is tied with an incumbent president [of] the United States."

But the sensibility in Boston is also decidedly realistic. Some Romney advisers acknowledge that the burden is on the candidate and those around him to quiet doubters inside their own party and elsewhere, and to demonstrate that they have a compelling message, along with a strategy and the discipline to execute it.

The coming week will test whether Romney's campaign can do something they've struggled with for many weeks, which is to deliver a coherent and sustained message across every possible platform - in their paid advertising, in what the candidate and his running mate, Paul Ryan, say on the campaign trail, in the digital world that now helps shape the conversation, and through the many surrogates used to spread and amplify that message.

Then comes the next test, which is the first of the presidential and vice-presidential debates. Advisers to both candidates see the Oct. 3 debate in Denver as the best opportunity for Romney to force a shift in the campaign's dynamic, which has been running against the GOP nominee for the past three weeks.

Contradictory perspectives

Romney advisers now interpret the state of the race from two somewhat contradictory perspectives. On the one hand, they see national tracking polls that a week ago showed Obama in the lead immediately after his convention but that tightened dramatically after that. Other national polls give Obama a lead.

The other view of the race comes from recent polls in the battleground states that consistently show Romney running behind. Especially troubling are Obama's narrow leads in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, all vital to Romney's chances of winning. If presidential campaigns are really a series of state-by-state contests, Romney's path to 270 electoral votes is far more problematic than Obama's at this moment.

But Romney advisers see a rush to judgment about the state of the campaign by pundits and commentators, and they dismiss suggestions that the campaign has taken a decisive turn. That view is shared in Chicago among Obama's top advisers, who believe they are in a stronger position than Romney but who expect the race to be close and hard-fought until November.

"I'm realistic that Romney's had a couple of bad weeks, but there's lots of time for him to recover," said a senior Obama adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to offer an assessment of the race.

Romney advisers acknowledge two potentially significant developments during the Democratic convention that boosted the president's standing, which, if they persist, could make the challenger's path to victory more difficult.

One was a rise in enthusiasm among Democrats, who now appear as energized as Republicans. If that holds, it could change the calculus on who is likely to turn out between now and Nov. 6 in ways detrimental to Romney. Both campaigns say their get-out-the-vote machinery is ready to produce maximum turnout among their supporters.

More worrisome to Romney and the Republicans is what appears to be an unexpected shift in the public mood since the two parties completed their conventions. Although still negative overall about the direction of the country, more Americans now say things are moving in the right direction and more express optimism about the future of the economy.

Romney's advisers, like their counterparts at Obama headquarters in Chicago, are closely monitoring these attitude shifts, admitting that they aren't certain what caused them or whether they will last until November. "I think that was something they were successful with at their convention, changing the narrative a little bit about things getting better," said Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie. "I don't know if they can sustain that in the face of economic reality."

Two weeks ago, Romney's campaign was set back over a controversy about how he responded to protests in Egypt and the subsequent killing of four Americans in Libya. Romney advisers were frustrated that a succession of economic reports, all of which could be used to portray Obama's economic record as a failure, were washed away.

They included reports about the rising deficit, the poverty rate (which did not go down), manufacturing jobs (which fell) and the Federal Reserve's announcement that the economy would need sizable and indefinite help to create more jobs.

To Romney's team, this was a further sign that the fundamentals of the race leave the president in a vulnerable position - if only Romney can capitalize on those fundamentals more effectively than he has so far. That means Romney and Ryan may have to do more than they've been doing to remind voters of the current economic conditions, even as they try to explain what they would do if elected.

The 47 percent controversy

Romney advisers say they have a message plan - and the target audiences they need to attract - and will start to roll it out in the coming days. They tried to do this a week ago but were forced to spend most of the week explaining comments by Romney at a spring fundraiser, captured surreptitiously on video, in which he said the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes consider themselves victims and believe they are entitled to government support.

On Friday, Romney released hundreds of pages of his 2011 tax filings, with his campaign hoping the disclosure would finally quiet months of political controversy over his personal finances. He paid $1.9 million in taxes on $13.69 million in income, most of it from his investments, for an effective rate of 14.1 percent, according to his returns. The Obama campaign said the financials paint an incomplete picture of the wealth he amassed at Bain Capital.

Romney has tried any number of ways to elevate the campaign dialogue to his advantage, drawing a contrast between what he calls the government-centered worldview of the president and his vision for an opportunity society. But so far he's had trouble for two reasons. He hasn't found a consistent way to frame that contrast and he's been distracted, or allowed himself to be distracted, by small controversies and chaff thrown up by the opposition.

"I don't want to give them message advice," said one Obama adviser, "but I think what's hurt them most is they haven't given voters any reason to vote for Romney. The question is: Is it too late?"

Romney advisers say in the coming weeks, there will be much greater effort at supplying answers to those questions.

In Ohio, Romney plans to try to build more support among blue-collar voters by raising the economic threat of China and highlighting his trade policies cracking down on the country for intellectual-property infringement and currency manipulation. Romney plans to hammer his message about China "cheating," an aggressive stance his strategists believe will help him in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest.

Meanwhile, in Northern Virginia, a critical swing region of a key battleground state, Romney is trying to close a deficit with Obama among female voters by stressing debt and government spending issues. The campaign is airing an ad, "Dear Daughter," featuring a mother talking to her newborn about her share of the federal debt, and advisers said similar ads are scheduled in the weeks to come.

'Water is not muddy'

"It's a very, very clear contrast," said one Romney adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely about strategy. "The water is not muddy on this. Obama has a worldview, and we've seen it through the first four years of his presidency, that every problem he encounters he solves by throwing more government money at it - whether it's health care, whether it's the stimulus, whether it's the auto bailout."

Romney's advisers say they are not expecting an instant turnaround. "We're going to stay on it and keep pounding it," Gillespie said. "It may not be that it breaks through so much as it penetrates."

Although Romney has raised huge amounts of money for the general election over the past few months, he was at a disadvantage throughout the summer because he was short on money that he could spend before he formally accepted the nomination at his convention in Tampa.

His campaign team also made the decision - questionable in the eyes of the Obama team - to spend no money on ads during either convention. They didn't have the money to spend during the Republican convention and decided whatever they spent during the Democratic convention would be washed out by the media's coverage of events in Charlotte. As a result, according to a Romney adviser, they were outspent, campaign vs. campaign, $18 million to zero during that two-week period.

But they argue that the Obama team failed during the summer to knock out Romney and that the fact that he is still standing is evidence that voters are still looking for reasons not to reelect Obama. "They wanted to settle the race by August," Gillespie said. "It didn't work."

Obama advisers argue that was never their strategy. "That wasn't the goal," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. "The goal was to lay out a vision of where we want to take the country and to set up a choice, and that's exactly what we did."

The other obstacle Romney faces is a campaign environment in which small and trivial matters can often dominate the daily discussion. Romney advisers believe Obama's campaign has been effective at feeding the media's appetite for such controversies and they recognize that avoiding those distractions or swatting them away must be an essential part of their overall strategy if they want to draw contrasts with Obama on big issues.

That leaves Romney with a full plate and little time. There is only a small percentage of voters who haven't made up their minds. Early voting starts in the battleground state of Iowa next week, and other swing states will follow in October, shrinking daily the available pool of voters who might respond to Romney's message.

Romney's advisers have drawn considerable criticism from within the Republican Party and now find themselves trying to sift through the chatter for good ideas coming from the outside while screening out the rest. But if they once thought the election would turn their way simply because of the state of the economy and the dissatisfaction with Obama, they now know they have to make a sale on Romney's behalf. Said one Romney adviser, "We have to take it to the broader argument, and that's what we're doing."

balzd@washpost.com

ruckerp@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



822 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 23, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition


Romney wasn't responsible for outsourcing to China, though he may have profited from it


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A05


LENGTH: 987 words


"I understand my opponent has been running around Ohio claiming he's going to roll up his sleeves and he's going to take the fight to China. Now, here's the thing. His experience has been owning companies that were called 'pioneers' in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China. He made money investing in companies that uprooted from here and went to China. Pioneers. Now, Ohio, you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

- President Obama,at a rally Monday in Cincinnati

President Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio, where he responded to a tough ad by Mitt Romney about his record on China with barbed comments regarding Romney's record as an investor. The president's remarks were foreshadowed by a video released by the Obama campaign last weekend, which asserts that the GOP presidential nominee outsourced jobs to China.

This is a pretty serious charge. What's the evidence for this?

The Facts

 Obama's reference to Romney owning companies that were "pioneers" comes directly from a front-page article in The Washington Post last June.

As we have noted before, the Obama campaign has misinterpreted this article in some of its television advertising. The actual article, in fact, does not say that transfers of U.S. jobs took place while Romney ran the private equity firm of Bain Capital. Instead, it says that Bain was prescient in identifying an emerging business trend - the movement of back-office, customer service and other functions out of companies that were willing to let third parties handle that business. Several of the companies mentioned in the article have grown into major international players in the offshoring field.

However, the president put it bluntly: "You can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

The Obama campaign pointed to several Bain investments to back up this claim, but upon close examination they quickly fall apart.

In the case of Holson Burnes, a Rhode Island company that manufactured picture frame and photo albums, there is no evidence American jobs were ever shipped to China. A news article cited by the campaign actually concerns a product line that was eliminated by the company, not sending jobs overseas.

Two other companies named by the Obama campaign, Stream International and Modus Media, were mentioned in the original Post article, though no reference is made of Stream having operations in China. Modus was originally a subsidiary of Stream but became an independent company in 1998. Modus had operations that included facilities in China, but there is no evidence that U.S. jobs were shipped there while Romney was managing Bain. (In 2000, Modus closed a plant in California while opening one in Mexico, but that's not China.)

Finally, there is Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, which manufactured household appliances for a number of consumer product companies, such as Sunbeam and Hamilton Beach. But this was an investment made by two Bain affiliates, principally Brookside Capital. Brookside is in essence a hedge fund, meaning it makes passive stock investments. As the description says on the Bain Web site, "the principal investment objective of the Fund is to achieve capital appreciation through investing primarily in publicly traded equity securities globally."

Still, it is worth noting that in a 1999 Securities and Exchange Commission filing Romney was listed as "the sole shareholder, sole director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookside Inc. and thus is the controlling person of Brookside Inc." Presumably he kept a close watch on Brookside's investments, but these stock purchases still are of a different nature than Bain Capital's private-equity deals.

Global-Tech certainly benefited from outsourcing, though one news release issued by the company during the 1998-2000 period of Bain ownership bemoans the fact that Sunbeam had delayed closing its plants, forcing Global-Tech to delay expansion plans.

Moreover, Romney at the time was clearly interested in investments in China. In a transcript of a Feb. 11, 1998, panel discussion published in the Boston Globe, Romney spoke of visiting a factory - the company name is not mentioned - with earnest Chinese workers.

Romney told a somewhat similar story in a video that surfaced recently of a private fundraiser. The remarks are certainly interesting, but Bain has claimed this was an investment that did not pan out.

Without evidence of a direct investment, it seems a stretch to say Romney shipped jobs to China because of a passive investment in a foreign company. This is different from investments in which Bain Capital took a direct role in helping to manage a company.

Finally, one other example, which the Obama campaign did not highlight: Bain's 1990s investment in GT Bicycles (which assembled bicycles by taking advantage of lower-cost labor in China, Taiwan and elsewhere) indeed was an harbinger of a trend that later greatly hurt bike manufacturing in the United States. But during the period that Romney was still at Bain, GT actually added jobs in the United States.

The Pinocchio Test

The president and his campaign have gone too far here. There is no evidence that Romney, through Bain investments in which he had an active role, was responsible for shipping American jobs to China.

We would have considered this a Four-Pinocchio violation, except for the fact that some of the Bain investments (such as GT Bicycles) were a harbinger of broader trends in the transfer of American jobs overseas. Global-Tech also benefited from outsourcing, but as far as we can tell it was a passive investment by a Bain-related hedge fund.

That means Romney probably profited from outsourcing. But that is a far cry from saying that Romney himself was responsible for outsourcing American jobs to China.

kesslerg@washpost.com

To read previous Fact Checker columns, go to washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



823 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 23, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


Battling frontline complacency


BYLINE: Amy Gardner


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1083 words


Jim Messina, President Obama's campaign manager, spoke by conference call to more than 100 members of his Virginia staff last Sunday night to ask whether they're meeting their door-knocking, phone-calling and voter-registering goals - and to urge them: "Now is the time to push even harder."

The next night, the call was to Colorado. On Wednesday, he met privately with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill to deliver a similar message. And on Saturday, he traveled to Wisconsin to meet with field organizers, neighborhood team leaders and other volunteers there.

"Ignore the polls," Messina said on the call to Virginia, he recalled. "There are always going to be polls showing us up. There are always going to be polls showing us down. None of that matters. What matters is your voter contacts in your state."

Messina's sense of urgency might seem disingenuous in the current political environment. Republican Mitt Romney has lurched from one damaging moment to the next. Recent polls show him trailing Obama in pivotal states, including Ohio and Virginia. Privately, advisers say they believe they are winning - or at least on track to do so Nov. 6.

But if there is an ongoing danger for the president, it is that his supporters will take his apparent advantages for granted - and fail to show up on Election Day.

And so as Obama's fortunes have appeared to improve, so, too, have his campaign's efforts to convince supporters that the race is far from over. They say they have been aided by Democrats' deep concern over Romney's policies, lack of details and choice of running mate in Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.). All of it has inspired Obama backers to redouble their efforts to stay engaged.

"You know what? I'm very scared about this election," said Ann Fremgen, 59, a retired teacher from Golden, Colo., one of scores of current and former teachers sporting "Educators for Obama" shirts who listened to the president speak last week against a backdrop of Colorado's Flatiron Range. "I would be devastated if Romney were elected. I think he is a total puppet. I am talking to people. I am here today. I have not volunteered yet, but I am going to."

Obama's advisers view complacency as a special threat because they have built so much of their strategy around a vast field operation to register new voters, urge them to the polls or persuade that tiny band of undecided Americans to choose Obama. The effort is entering crunch time now, with registration deadlines looming and early voting underway in a few states. But it is an effort that depends heavily on the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of field workers and volunteers across the country. Anything that could suppress that enthusiasm - like the idea that Romney is sunk - makes nerves jangle in Obama's Chicago headquarters.

And they are facing a torrent of media coverage - and comedy routines - reinforcing the narrative that momentum favors Obama. "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart won't stop talking about Clint Eastwood's now-infamous monologue with a chair. Pundits have declared a recent Politico piece about dissent within the Romney campaign tantamount to an "obituary." And most recently, the news and late-night shows have endlessly played a newly uncovered video clip of Romney declaring that nearly half of Americans "believe they are victims" and that "the government has a responsibility to take care of them."

Worse for Obama, the political activists who make up his field operation pay more attention to this stuff than the electorate overall.

"Though [Romney] is melting down, overconfidence is dangerous," Bill Burton, who leads an independent super PAC supporting Obama, said in a tweet this week. Although Burton has welcomed attention on Romney's woes - his committee, Priorities USA, put up a TV ad within 24 hours criticizing the video remarks - he also claims to be certain that the race will remain close and that Obama's fortunes could turn as quickly as Romney's seemed to.

Such urgency has been apparent in the sprawling crowds Obama has drawn to political rallies in Colorado, Ohio, Florida and Virginia in recent weeks. But it may also be at least partly the fruits of rhetorical seeds planted by the campaign and his allies.

Despite their fundraising prowess, Obama advisers have emphasized the financial advantage they expect Romney - and particularly his independent Republican supporters - to parlay into an outmatched ad war on the airwaves.

"These folks have super PACs that are writing $10 million checks and have the capacity to just bury us under the kind of advertising that we've never seen before," Obama told about 200 high-dollar donors at a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on Tuesday night.

That messaging seems to be working - despite the emergence of more and more evidence that the Republican spending advantage is not moving the needle much in some of the most hard-fought states in the country, including North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The Obama team also has been relentless in pushing out the notion of the stark choice voters face this fall - the idea that a Romney win would set the nation back, while a second term for Obama would keep the country moving ahead.

Jane Gouveia, 59, a property manager and an Obama volunteer from Lakewood, Colo., practically recited the Obama campaign's alarmist message as she left his recent outdoor rally in Golden on a sunny September afternoon. Gouveia also said she is convinced that Democrats face an extraordinary opponent in the Romney fundraising juggernaut, a fact that has compelled her to volunteer one day a week at a local Obama office. "There's no way we can be complacent!" she said. "The amount of money that's being spent to distort public opinion compels me into action."

There is an irony to the fact that Obama's team is now worried that too much confidence could keep supporters at home when, just a few weeks ago, much of the talk was about an enthusiasm gap between the two parties. Then, pundits wondered if Democrats were unexcited enough by Obama's leadership to stay home; now, the purported concern is that they are so sure he'll win that their effort isn't needed.

"If you just think of the things that happened in the last 10 days or so, there's a lot more time for a lot more developments," Burton said. "Another hidden tape, another foreign-policy moment, and some big moments, too, like the debates. So everything can change in a second in this race."

gardnera@washpost.com

Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 23, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



824 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 22, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Reveals He Paid 14% Rate In '11 Tax Return


BYLINE: By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI; Floyd Norris and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1232 words


Mitt Romney responded to months of political pressure on Friday by making public his most recent tax return and limited information from previous years, asserting that he had paid a double-digit federal income tax rate for more than two decades.

Mr. Romney's return for 2011 showed that he paid an effective federal income tax rate of 14 percent last year, or a little more than $1.9 million on adjusted gross income of about $13.7 million.

A letter from his accountants said his tax rate from 1990 through 2009 had never fallen below 13.66 percent but did not disclose the amount of tax paid. Mr. Romney's 2010 return, which he made public in January, showed that he paid a rate of 13.9 percent.

Mr. Romney's tax return for last year showed just how sensitive a political matter his wealth and tax rate has become. In a bit of reverse financial engineering, he and his wife, Ann, gave up $1.75 million worth of charitable deductions, raising his tax payments significantly.

Had he claimed all the deductions to which he was entitled in 2011, his effective rate could have dipped to near 10 percent, contradicting his past assurances that he had never paid below 13 percent.

But forgoing the full deductions available to him put him at odds with his own past assertions that he had never paid more taxes than he owed and his statement that if he had done so, ''I don't think I'd be qualified to become president,'' as he put it to ABC News in July.

Mr. Romney had pledged to disclose his 2011 return before Election Day, and his campaign said it was filed Friday with the Internal Revenue Service. His aides appear to have judged that any political harm from releasing the new documents -- made public on Friday afternoon -- would best be timed for the end of a week that had been among the most difficult of his campaign.

While the release of some figures for the previous two decades went beyond what Mr. Romney had signaled he would be willing to disclose, it remained impossible to get a complete picture of his tax liabilities from those years without his returns. Democrats quickly pounced on Mr. Romney's decision to release only average figures for his 1990-2009 returns, leaving many details of his finances and tax planning unclear.

In a statement, Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for President Obama, said that Mr. Romney ''continues to fail'' the test of full disclosure by releasing only a summary of his earlier returns. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, who had accused Mr. Romney of having paid no taxes for a decade, did not repeat his claim on Friday -- but did not back down either.

''When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?'' Mr. Reid said in a statement. ''Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes.''

The Romney campaign took questions about the new documents only over e-mail, and a memo from his lawyer, R. Bradford Malt, left unanswered questions that have swirled about Mr. Romney's overseas income, foreign tax credits and use of sophisticated corporate structures abroad to minimize his tax burdens at home.

A campaign spokeswoman did not respond to questions about which years Mr. Romney or the family trusts had filed separate forms with the Internal Revenue Service disclosing their foreign income. Disclosing those forms would reveal whether Mr. Romney had over the years declared all of his foreign income to the I.R.S. in a timely manner.

The summary of his returns for the years before 2010 said that the Romneys had owed both federal and state taxes in each year between 1990 and 2009 and had paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 20 percent of their adjusted gross income.

But accounting experts cautioned that without seeing the returns themselves it was impossible to gauge Mr. Romney's actual tax burden. The campaign declined to disclose the minimum dollar amount of Mr. Romney's federal income tax obligations during those two decades.

Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning research group, said Friday that by including in the average the years 1992 through 1997, Mr. Romney's accountants skewed his average rate upward because investment income -- the overwhelming source of Mr. Romney's wealth -- was taxed at nearly double the current rate of 15 percent. In addition, the family appeared to defer some tax deductions into future years, a move that would give Mr. Romney further options -- all of them legal -- to adjust his effective federal tax rate.

In an amended return also released Friday, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney's running mate, disclosed that he and his wife had initially failed to report $61,122 in income from 2011. He said the failure was inadvertent. The change raised their total income to $323,416 and increased their taxes by $19,917 to $64,674, or 20 percent of adjusted gross income.

They owed a penalty of $59 for the original underpayment. The Ryans explained that they had overlooked their income from the Prudence Little Living Trust. Mrs. Little, who died in 2010, was Mrs. Ryan's mother.

Some elements of Mr. Romney's finances became more opaque in 2011. Taxable wages for household employees, which reached $20,603 for four people in 2010, were not included on the 2011 return. Instead, the family made those payments through a payroll company that filed its own return.

Mr. Malt, who manages the family's trusts, also disposed of politically sensitive investments while Mr. Romney campaigned for president. The 2011 tax returns his campaign released Friday showed that Mr. Romney's family trusts had invested in shares of a Chinese-owned state oil company and sold those investments last summer, as Mr. Romney's anti-Chinese comments heated up on the campaign trail.

Mr. Romney's trusts also hedged against the dollar. Mr. Malt invested in a derivative that would profit if the dollar fell against a group of foreign currencies. He also put some of the family's money in derivative securities linked to the Japanese stock market and to an index that includes stocks in every major country except the United States.

In 2009 and 2010, the W. Mitt Romney blind trust invested $77,262 in shares of Cnooc Limited, the Chinese state-owned oil company, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. On Aug. 10, 2011, as Mr. Romney was emerging as a harsh critic of China, the shares were sold, producing a profit of $8,138 as the trust made money on the oil company and lost money on the bank.

Mr. Romney's campaign has repeatedly criticized Mr. Obama for failing to take a tough line against Chinese trade practices. After Mr. Obama this week announced new trade actions against China, Mr. Romney took credit for forcing his hand.

The Romney family trusts invested around the world. They owned shares in Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank; FLSmidth, a Danish machinery company; ArcelorMittal, a steel company based in Luxembourg with operations around the world; and Komatsu, a Japanese machinery company. All those investments were sold on Aug. 10, 2011 -- the day before a Republican primary debate in Iowa.

Mr. Romney's income in 2011 would put him among those Americans who will most likely pay far higher Medicare taxes next year, thanks to Mr. Obama's health care law, which Mr. Romney has vowed to repeal.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/us/politics/under-pressure-romney-offers-more-tax-data.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mitt Romney, addressing supporters during a rally in Las Vegas on Friday, has made public more information about his taxes. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A11) CHARTS: Comparing Tax Rates: How the candidates' incomes and taxes paid in 2011 compare with the typical American taxpayer and the top 0.1 percent. (Sources: The candidates
Tax Policy Center) (A11)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



825 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 22, 2012 Saturday


Sept. 22: Little Agreement Among Pollsters on 'Enthusiasm Gap'


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 931 words



HIGHLIGHT: Saturday brought a light volume of polling data, and the FiveThirtyEight forecast was not much changed. Barack Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College, according to the model, are slightly improved from Friday's forecast.


Saturday brought a light volume of polling data, and the FiveThirtyEight forecast was not much changed. Barack Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College are 77.5 percent, according to the model, slightly improved from 76.9 percent in Friday's forecast.

The polls that were published since our Friday update, all of which were national polls, had mixed results. Mr. Obama gained ground on Mitt Romney in the online tracking polls conducted by Ipsos and by the RAND Corporation. Nevertheless, he lost two percentage points in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, and his numbers held steady in the Gallup tracking poll, which continues to show a tied race. (We'll have more about how to think about that Gallup poll in a separate article.)

Mr. Obama's numbers also held steady, at a four-point lead among likely voters, in a United Press International national poll, which is being published roughly once per week.

Over all, Saturday's data seemed like a total wash -- so why did Mr. Obama's forecast improve, even incrementally?

The reason is that we are now getting to the point where a neutral day in the polls can be thought as being ever-so-slightly favorable to Mr. Obama, since he leads in the race and since Mr. Romney now has only 45 days to make up the deficit. This will be especially true over the course of the next week or so, during which time the penalty that the model has been applying to Mr. Obama's polls because of the potential aftereffects of the Democratic convention will phase out.

Another way to look at this: Mr. Obama's win probability in our "now-cast," which is our estimate of what would happen if the election were held today, is 95.8 percent. (The "now-cast" also does not apply the convention bounce penalty to Mr. Obama's polls.) As Election Day draws nearer, the forecast will converge toward the now-cast, until eventually they are exactly the same on Nov. 6.

Still, you should generally not read very much into changes of such a small magnitude in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The probabilities that we report are based on 25,001 simulations that we run each day. That's a lot of simulations, but it still leaves a small margin of error of about 0.5 percentage points on the daily win probability estimates.

The more significant trend is that Mr. Obama's forecast has been moving upward for several consecutive days; his current win probability of 77.5 percent is up from 72.9 percent on Tuesday.

Mixed Results Among Likely Voter Models

Unusually, the U.P.I. poll had Mr. Obama with a larger lead among likely voters than among the broader universe of registered voters, with whom he led by roughly two percentage points instead. Most polls this year have shown that Mr. Obama's numbers are worse among likely voters than among registered ones.

We diligently keep track of national and state polls that report both registered voter and likely voter numbers since they are instrumental in the likely voter adjustment that the model applies. An initial round of polls completed just after the Democratic convention suggested that the gap between the two sets of results had narrowed, although since then we've seen results that are all over the place.

An Associated Press poll earlier this week, for instance, had Mr. Obama with a 10-point lead among registered voters but just a one-point lead among likely voters, making for an enormous nine-point "enthusiasm gap" in favor of Mr. Romney. But then there are scattered cases, like the U.P.I. poll or last week's Fox News national survey, in which Mr. Obama actually did better in the likely voter version of the poll.

Likely voter models are a necessary evil -- and polls will normally overstate the performance of the Democratic candidate without them. But there are so many different ways to apply them -- some of which are clumsily designed -- that they can sometimes make the data noisier.

Still, most polling firms are clustering in the range of showing Mr. Obama performing one to four points worse among likely voters than among registered voters.

For some reason, the gap seems to be smaller in state polls -- where it has averaged about 1.5 percentage points in polls published since the Democratic convention -- than in national polls.

Most of the state-level polls are of swing states, and it is theoretically possible that Mr. Obama's "ground game" is having some favorable impact in these places, helping to reduce the turnout advantage that Republicans normally enjoy. If so, it is possible that Mr. Obama's position would be stronger in the Electoral College relative to the national popular vote.

Still, because there has been so much divergence in pollsters' estimates of the enthusiasm gap, and because the mix of polling firms is somewhat different at the state and the national levels, I think we will need to see another couple of weeks' worth of data before we can come to too many conclusions about this.

For the time being, the model evaluates the Electoral College as being a fairly neutral factor this year, or perhaps even one that slightly favors Mr. Romney.

Part of the reason why is that, although Mr. Obama has had fairly strong polls since his convention in the swing states, he has also shown improvement in his polls in large-population blue states like California, New York and Massachusetts.

If Mr. Obama wins California by 25 points rather than 20, for instance, that would increase his share of the national popular vote by 0.5 percentage points. But these votes are wasted in terms of the Electoral College since Mr. Obama was all but certain to win California anyway.


LOAD-DATE: September 22, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



826 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 22, 2012 Saturday 2:12 AM EST


A bipartisan foul: 'Medicare is going broke';
Politicians in both parties go too far in using words like "broke" and "bankrupt" when talking about Medicare.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 618 words


"Medicare is going broke. It's not politics. It's math."

- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in a new Romney campaign ad titled "Least We Can Do."

"What they didn't tell you is what they're [the Romney campaign] proposing would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016."

- Vice President Biden, at the Democratic convention, Sept. 6, 2012

 Medicare "is going broke."

- President Obama, Aug. 15, 2009

We have bipartisan agreement! Medicare is going broke, busted, bankrupt...or is it?

 We have touched on this before but decided to take another stab after the new ad featuring Sen. Rubio was released by the Romney campaign. It's actually a fairly effective ad, with the calm message that the GOP Medicare plan - so often inaccurately attacked by Democrats - is designed to "save" it for current retirees and be different for younger Americans, in what Rubio pitches as a bit of a gift from one generation to another.

 But his line that Medicare is going "broke" - using simple "math" - repeats a bit of political hokum that both parties persist in repeating.  For instance, here's Obama in 2009:

"Broke," the word Rubio and Obama used, is an informal way of saying "bankrupt." Or, as the dictionary says, "penniless."

The Facts

 First of all, there are four parts to Medicare: Part A (hospital insurance), Part B (medical insurance), Part C (Medicare Advantage - private plans for parts A and B), and Part D (prescription drug plans).

When asked for evidence of Medicare going broke, a Romney spokesman pointed us to news articles about the latest Medicare trustees report, showing that the Part A trust fund would be exhausted by 2024.

 So, in other words, we are not talking about all of Medicare, just the part that covers hospital visits, hospice care, nursing facilities and the like. Part B, which involves seeing a doctor, is paid out of general funds and premiums.

 Moreover, though the fund would be "depleted," it would NOT be "penniless" or "broke." That is because the government could still cover 87 percent of estimated expenses in 2024 - and 67 percent in 2050. So, yes, there would be a shortfall, but it doesn't mean that the fund is bankrupt.

 There are various ways that Congress could deal with this problem. Already, in the Obama health care law, a surtax was added that would hit wealthy Americans, which extended the "insolvency" date by 12 years. . (This is why Biden can claim that repeal of the health care law would make Medicare go "bankrupt" sooner.)  Congress has also moved some functions from Part A to Part B to extend the life of the fund, in which was basically a book-keeping maneuver.

 It's also important to remember that the Part A fund has from its inception been on the brink of going "broke." Page 4 of a useful report by the Congressional Research Service, titled "Medicare: History of Insolvency Projections," shows that in 1970 it was due to go "broke" in 1972.

The Pinocchio Test

 We do not mean to play down the serious financial challenges facing Medicare as the baby-boom generation begins to retire in full force, putting additional pressure on the federal budget. But the rhetoric on both sides needs to be toned down, without using nonsense words such as "broke."

We're not picking on Rubio but giving a bipartisan round of Pinocchios here.

 Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



827 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 21, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Cash Low, Romney Striving To Find New Large Donors


BYLINE: By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, JO CRAVEN McGINTY and DEREK WILLIS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 900 words


Mitt Romney entered the final months of the presidential campaign with a cash balance of just $35 million, racing to find new large donors and rally low-dollar contributors in August even while he raised tens of millions of dollars for the Republican Party.

Mr. Romney's campaign took in $67 million that month but also spent about that much, twice the rate of spending as in any prior month, according to reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. More than half of what Mr. Romney raised in August was money he could not spend until after his party convention at the end of the month. And he grew so short of available cash that his campaign borrowed $20 million and sharply curtailed advertising, even while doling out post-convention bonuses to a handful of senior staff members.

The new numbers, along with disclosures filed by major ''super PACs'' supporting the two candidates, challenge the appearance of financial strength that had burnished Mr. Romney over the summer, and show unexpected strengths for President Obama going into the fall.

While Mr. Romney's combined fund-raising apparatus began September with $168.5 million in cash, much of it was sitting in the accounts of the Republican National Committee, which reported cash on hand of about $76.6 million. While an estimated $42 million remains in his joint account with Republican Party committees, only some of it will be available to Mr. Romney for his general election campaign.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats, by contrast, began the fall campaign with less money over all, about $125 million. But federal law guarantees candidates, not parties, the lowest available ad rate in the days leading up to a general election. Thanks in part to his army of small donors, Mr. Obama gathered more money in his own campaign account than Mr. Romney, whose advantage lies in raising large checks that primarily benefit the R.N.C.

Mr. Obama began September with a balance of $86 million, even after spending $65 million on advertising. He raised over twice as much money as Mr. Romney in checks of under $200, which donors can give repeatedly without quickly hitting federal contribution limits.

Far less money went to the Democratic National Committee, which is playing less of a role for Mr. Obama at this stage in the race. Mr. Obama did not transfer to the committee any money from their joint fund-raising committee, which holds most of the cash Mr. Obama has raised for the party. Instead, the committee borrowed $8 million.

And while the Republican committee spent heavily on advertising in August, its Democratic counterpart spent most of its money on field efforts, including large transfers to state parties, ending the month almost $5 million in the red.

The Republicans' lead in overall cash on hand could still give Mr. Romney some advantages: The Republican National Committee, for example, could devote any portion of its cash on hand to so-called independent expenditures, which are paid for with party money but cannot be coordinated with Mr. Romney's or the committee's strategists.

And the filings suggest a significant amount of untapped money waiting for the Republican nominee on the sidelines. At least 32,000 donors have given the maximum of $2,500 to Mr. Romney's campaign for the primary season running through August, according to an analysis by The New York Times, but have not contributed to the general election. That group that could generate about $81 million with a second round of general election checks.

But prospecting for those checks will take time. While Mr. Obama can count on a steady stream of small contributions donated over the Internet, Mr. Romney's intake depends more on a heavy schedule of fund-raisers in cities around the country, detouring to deep-pocketed cities far from swing states.

Mr. Romney's cash crunch in August also reflected the rapid expansion of his campaign organization, a task Mr. Obama undertook months ago, using his early cash to open offices and hire staff while Mr. Romney was still spending heavily to win the Republican primary.

Mr. Romney and the Republican committee spent more on advertising in August, $47.7 million, than in July, $36.8 million. And combined spending on turnout, strategy and research nearly doubled from July to August. Spending on computer equipment and support reached a million in August, twenty times the amount spent in July, while payroll went to $4.1 million from $2.5 million.

Another set of expenditures is likely to draw grumbles from Mr. Romney's allies given his campaign's current struggles: The day after accepting the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney gave what appeared to be $192,440 in bonuses to senior campaign staff members. At least nine aides received payments on Aug. 31 well in excess of their typical biweekly salaries, including $25,000 each for Matthew Rhoades, the campaign manager; Lanhee Chen, a policy adviser; and Katie Biber, the general counsel. Rich Beeson, the political director, received $37,500.

The super PAC backing Mr. Obama also raised more than its Republican counterpart in August, a rare head-to-head win for Democrats in an arena overwhelmingly dominated by Republican groups and donors.

Priorities USA Action, founded by former aides to Mr. Obama, raised a record $10 million in August, compared with the $7 million raised by Restore Our Future, the super PAC founded by former Romney aides.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/politics/cash-low-romney-striving-to-find-new-large-donors.html


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



828 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 21, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Ad in Florida Warns Of Weakness on Iran


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 13


LENGTH: 239 words


Israel and Middle East policy have a tendency of surfacing in presidential politics in rather combustible ways. And a new advertisement that will run in areas of Florida with large Jewish populations attempts to stoke anxiety over American policies in the region, using a news clip of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warning of the risks of a nuclear Iran.

"The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear arms," Mr. Netanyahu is shown saying.

For dramatic effect, a soundtrack fit for an episodic drama like "Homeland" plays as the prime minister continues. "The world tells Israel, 'Wait. There's still time.' And I say wait for what? Wait until when?"Then an unseen announcer concludes: "The world needs American strength, not apologies."

That line is a not-so-veiled swipe at President Obama. Mitt Romney and other Republicans have criticized his foreign policy as apologetic, toward volatile countries like Iran.

The group that produced the ad, Secure America Now, is run by two longtime Republican strategists, Nelson Warfield ? and John ?McLaughlin, and ?Pat Caddell, a former aide to Jimmy Carter who is now a Fox News contributor. They have reserved $500,000 of airtime in Fort Myers, West Palm Beach and Miami.

A senior Israeli official said the government was not consulted on the ad and did not approve it.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/netanyahu-appears-in-conservative-groups-ad/


LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



829 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 21, 2012 Friday


Romney Releases 2011 Tax Returns


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1530 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney paid $1.95 million in taxes on his 2011 investment income of $13.7 million, his campaign revealed on Friday.


5:47 p.m. | Updated Mitt Romney paid $1.95 million in taxes on his 2011 investment income of $13.7 million, his campaign revealed on Friday, making good on Mr. Romney's promise earlier this year to eventually release his full returns for that year.

Mr. Romney, who made millions by running Bain Capital, a private equity firm, paid an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 percent in taxes, primarily because most of his income was in the form of capital gains that are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. Mr. Romney has said that he has paid at least 13 percent in federal income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

In order for that claim to be true in 2011, Mr. Romney had to voluntarily take a smaller deduction than he was entitled to for his charitable deductions, his advisers said Friday.

Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, donated about $4 million to charity in 2011, but claimed only $2.25 million as a deduction. The campaign said that Mr. Romney's tax liability would have been far lower in 2011 had the Romneys claimed the full deduction for their charitable contributions.

"The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years," said R. Bradford Malt, Mr. Romney's trustee.

It is possible, however, that Mr. Romney could still deduct the unclaimed amount of his charitable donations in future tax years, experts said.

The Republican presidential nominee, who released his 2010 tax returns in January, continues to refuse demands from President Obama's campaign and other Democrats to release multiple years of his returns. Mr. Obama has sought to portray Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch millionaire who used off-shore accounts and accounting gimmicks to reduce his tax liability.

In an indication that the summaries will not satisfy Mr. Romney's critics, Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, posted the following message on Twitter: "Summaries? What is Romney hiding? This isn't just abt rates -- how about Swiss Bank Accts, Bermuda Shell Cos and Caymans Investments?"

But Mr. Romney released a letter later Friday from his tax advisers providing a summary of his tax liability for a 20-year period from 1990 to 2009. The summary says that Mr. Romney paid taxes every year during that period, that the lowest annual federal tax rate was 13.66 percent and that the Romneys gave an average of 13.45 percent of their income to charity during the period.

The bottom-line numbers provided by Mr. Romney's trustee were the first to be reported. But answers to more detailed questions will take longer to discover amid the many pages of documents released by the Republican campaign.

Among the questions raised by Mr. Romney's critics, including advisers to Mr. Obama's campaign: How much money, if any, did Mr. Romney pay in foreign taxes in 2011? How much money, if any, remains sheltered in overseas accounts? What are his remaining ties to Bain Capital, the firm he founded?

The letter from Mr. Romney's tax accountants appears to directly contradict unsubstantiated assertions from Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. Mr. Reid had asserted this summer that someone told him Mr. Romney paid no federal income taxes at all for ten years.

Mr. Reid made the allegation in interviews and on the floor of the Senate but repeatedly refused to say who provided him the information. Mr. Romney angrily accused Mr. Reid of lying, saying that the top Democrat in the Senate should "put up or shut up."

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Reid did not repeat his claim, but continued to attack Mr. Romney for a lack of transparency by releasing only summary of most of his tax returns.

"When will the American people see the returns he filed before he was running for president?," Mr. Reid said. "Governor Romney is showing us what he does when the public is looking. The true test of his character would be to show what he did when everyone was not looking at his taxes."

Mr. Reid also accused Mr. Romney of "manipulating" his 2011 tax return by deducing less than he was entitled to from charitable deductions so that his effective tax rate was higher.

"That raises the question: what else in those returns has Romney manipulated?" Mr. Reid said.

The letter released on Friday from Price Waterhouse Coopers, Mr. Romney's tax preparers, said that Mr. Romney paid taxes every year from 1990 to 2009.

"In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes," the company wrote. "Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%."

For months during the Republican primaries, Mr. Romney refused to release any information about the taxes he had paid, saying the information was not relevant despite a tradition of disclosure by presidential candidates that dates to his father's 1968 bid for the presidency. George W. Romney released 12 years of returns.

In April, under pressure from his Republican rivals for the nomination and Democratic critics, Mr. Romney had estimated he would owe $3.2 million in taxes on $20.9 million in income during 2011. At the time, he promised to release the full returns before Election Day.

His decision to release the tax documents on a Friday afternoon could help his campaign minimize news coverage of them. Politicians often try to release potentially damaging information just before a weekend, when voters are often paying less attention to their televisions and newspapers.

In spite of the timing, the release of the tax return is almost certain to rekindle the discussion about Mr. Romney's personal wealth and Democratic attacks that his aggressive use of legal tax avoidance techniques sets him apart from average Americans.

In an Obama television ad, a narrator mentions tax havens, offshore accounts and carried interest and then says: "Makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all. We don't know because Romney has released just one full year of his tax returns."

Democrats have sought to link Mr. Romney's personal tax returns to the tax policies he would pursue if he were elected president. Mr. Obama argues that Mr. Romney's tax policies are designed to provide tax cuts to wealthy people, which would lead to tax increases for middle-class citizens.

"Governor Romney's tax plan would actually raise taxes on middle-class families with children by an average of $2,000," Mr. Obama said last month at an event in New Hampshire. "Not to reduce the deficit, or grow jobs, or invest in education -- but to give another tax cut to people like him."

At a rally in Cincinnati earlier this week, Mr. Obama mocked the complexity of Mr. Romney's tax returns.

"I've actually done my own taxes," Mr. Obama said. "I don't know about some of these other folks, but I've done them, you know So I know we can make it more simple and more fair."

Mr. Romney's campaign has argued that his personal wealth is not relevant to the broader debate about who is best able to lead the country out of a sluggish economy.

Last month, Mr. Romney said the continued focus on his personal tax returns by his Democratic opponents and the news media was "small-minded" in light of the economic problems that the country faces. His wife, Ann, has said the campaign was resisting a disclosure that would go back years because opponents would use the information against Mr. Romney.

"The more we get attacked, the more we get questioned, the more we get pushed," Mrs. Romney said in an interview on NBC's "Rock Center" last month. "There's going to be no more tax releases given. Mitt is honest. His integrity is just golden."

But Mr. Romney had little choice but to release the full details of his 2011 tax returns, having promised to do so earlier in the year.

In an amended return, Paul Ryan, the vice presidential candidate, told the I.R.S. he and his wife had "inadvertently" failed to report $61,122 in income from 2011. That raised their total income to $323,416 and increased their taxes by $19,917 to $64,674, or 20 percent of adjusted gross income.

They owed a penalty of $59 for the original underpayment.

They explained that they had overlooked their income from the Prudence Little Living Trust. Mrs. Little, who died in 2010, was Mrs. Ryan's mother.

In a statement, Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama, said Mr. Romney's 2011 tax return confirms that "people like Mitt Romney pay a lower tax rate than many middle class families because of a set of complex loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top.

Ms. Cutter added that Mr. Romney "continues to fail" the test of full disclosure by releasing only a summary of his earlier tax returns. But she said the 2011 return confirms "that he continues to profit from millions of dollars invested overseas."



LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



830 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 21, 2012 Friday


For AARP Convention, Obama Plays Fact-Checker in Chief


BYLINE: MICHAEL COOPER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 479 words



HIGHLIGHT: In his speech to the AARP convention Friday, President Obama provided some important context around one of his ads attacking Representative Paul D. Ryan's Medicare plan.


President Obama's re-election campaign released an ad on Thursday that uses an analysis of an outdated Medicare plan by Representative Paul D. Ryan to warn, "The Romney-Ryan plan could raise seniors' costs up to $6,400 a year."

On Friday that statistic - which the Obama campaign has used in previous ads, and which was used in several speeches at the Democratic National Convention - was questioned by a fact-checker who noted that the figure referred to Mr. Ryan's "original plan" and that it had since been "modified."

The fact-checker? President Obama, who mentioned it in a speech beamed by satellite to AARP's convention in New Orleans.

Mr. Obama noted in his speech that independent analysts had found that Mr. Ryan's original Medicare proposal to give older Americans fixed amounts of money to buy private health insurance could force future recipients to pay "over $6,000 more for their Medicare" because it would cap the amount of money they would get each year and would therefore fail to keep up with rising health care costs.

But then Mr. Obama included some context and clarification that his ads do not.

"Now, that was his original plan, and I want to be fair here," Mr. Obama said. "He then modified it, because, obviously, there was a lot of pushback from seniors on that idea. So he said, well, we're going to have traditional Medicare stand side by side with the voucher program, and no current beneficiaries will be affected."

The Romney campaign says that its version of the Medicare plan -- which would offer recipients the option of using the money to buy traditional Medicare - does not call for the kind of hard spending caps that would have left many recipients making up the difference out of their own pockets.

But it is not exactly clear how that plan would work.

The Romney campaign's Web site asks: "How high will the premium support be? How quickly will it grow?"

The answer: "Mitt continues to work on refining the details of his plan, and he is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost. His goal is for Medicare to offer every senior affordable options that provide coverage and service at least as good as what today's seniors receive."

In his address to AARP, Mr. Obama warned that even without the cap the move toward private insurers could pose risks to the program. "The problem is that insurance companies, once they're getting vouchers, they're really good at recruiting the healthier, younger Medicare recipients and weeding out and leaving in traditional Medicare the older, sicker recipients,'' he said. "And over time what happens is that because there are older, sicker folks in the traditional Medicare plan, premiums start going up, they start going through the roof."


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



831 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 21, 2012 Friday


Romney's Family Trust Invested in Chinese Oil Company


BYLINE: FLOYD NORRIS and MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 353 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's 2011 tax returns show that his family trusts had invested in shares of a Chinese-owned state oil company but got rid of those investments this summer, as his anti-Chinese rhetoric heated up.


On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has become increasingly critical of China, saying the country is engaging in unfair trade practices and vowing to crack down on them in ways that are much more severe that the current administration.

The 2011 tax returns his campaign released on Friday show that Mr. Romney's family trusts had invested in shares of a Chinese-owned state oil company but got rid of those investments this summer as Mr. Romney's anti-Chinese rhetoric heated up on the campaign trail.

In 2009 and 2010, the W. Mitt Romney blind trust invested $77,262 in shares of Cnooc Limited, the state-owned Chinese oil company, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. On Aug. 10, 2011, as Mr. Romney was emerging as a harsh critic of China, the shares were sold, producing a profit of $8,138, as the trust made money on the oil company but lost money on the bank.

The trust also invested in derivative securities linked to the Japanese stock market and to an index that includes stocks in every major country except the United States. It invested in a derivative that would profit if the dollar fell against a group of foreign currencies.

Mr. Romney's campaign has repeatedly criticized President Obama for failing to take a tough line against Chinese trade practices. After Mr. Obama this week announced tough new trade actions against China, Mr. Romney took credit for forcing the president's hand.

"President Obama has spent 43 months failing to confront China's unfair trade practices," Mr. Romney said in a statement after Mr. Obama's announced that the government had filed trade complaints against China. "Campaign-season trade cases may sound good on the stump, but it is too little, too late for American businesses and middle-class families.

The Romney family trusts invested around the world. It also owned shares in Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank; FLSmidth, a Danish machinery company; Arcelormittal, a steel company based in Luxembourg with operations around the world, and Komatsu, a Japanese machinery company. All those investments were sold on Aug. 10, the day before a Republican debate in Iowa.


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



832 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 21, 2012 Friday
FINAL EDITION


Romney's bountiful summer wraps up running short on cash;
Obama also burning through funds with ad buys in crucial states


BYLINE: Fredreka Schouten, and Christopher Schnaars, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6A


LENGTH: 601 words


After dominating the fundraising race for much of the summer, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney started the fall campaign sprint with a little more than $50 million available to spend and a large loan to repay, campaign-finance reports filed Thursday show.

Romney raised nearly $67 million in August and spent nearly as much, according to his filings with the Federal Election Commission.

President Obama spent even more, burning through nearly all of the $84.8 million he raised in August, but he ended the month with nearly $89 million in cash reserves. Overall, Obama and the Democratic Party raised about $114 million in August, edging past the $111.6 million haul by Romney and the Republican Party.

Campaign-finance law barred Romney from tapping general-election money until he was nominated by Republicans at the party's national convention late last month - even as Obama spent heavily on advertising to advance his re-election.

To boost his cash flow, Romney received a $20 million bank loan on Aug. 22, just days before the start of the Republican National Convention. His filings show he still owed $15 million to the Bank of Georgetown at the end of August, but aides say his campaign paid down that amount in September.

Obama's spending allowed him to dominate the airwaves in key states, running scathing ads attacking Romney's tenure at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. In August alone, he spent more than $68 million on television commercials, online ads and other media expenses, nearly twice Romney's spending on media, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

"Obama has had more control of his message than the Romney campaign has," said Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine. "He's been better able to define Romney."

In the battleground state of Ohio, for instance, Obama has spent more than $40 million on ads since May 1 -- nearly twice the amount Romney has devoted to commercials there, according a tally by the National Journal. No Republican has won the presidency without carrying Ohio.

Outside conservative groups have helped to close the ad gap. Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC that collected $7 million in August, said it spent more than $20 million on advertising last month.

Super PACs can raise unlimited amounts of money to aid their favorite candidates but are barred from coordinating their spending directly with candidates.

The advertising from conservative groups has focused less on making the case for a Romney presidency and more on attacking Obama's record, said Travis Ridout, a political science professor at Washington State University who tracks political advertising.

"The trouble for Romney is that it seems like he still needs to define himself, something that should have been done long before now," he said.

Reports filed Thursday show Romney slowly building his staff. His campaign had 403 people on the payroll in August, up from 326 a month earlier. Obama employed 900 people last month.

Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, collected two $1million contributions in August. Robert Parsons of Scottsdale, Ariz., the CEO of Go Daddy, a company that hosts websites, gave $1 million. Another $1 million came from OdysseyRe Holdings, a Connecticut-based company that underwrites reinsurance and insurance coverage.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC aiding Obama, collected $10 million in August, marking its best month. Top donors included hedge fund billionaire James Simons at $2 million, and Texas trial lawyer Steve Mostyn and media mogul Anne Cox Chambers, who gave $1 million each.

Contributing: Ray Locker


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



833 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 21, 2012 Friday 10:43 PM EST


Fact checking a Romney appeal toward women;
An ad from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney says women are worse off than they were four years ago. We reviewed the facts.


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 1167 words


"Dear daughter. Welcome to America. Your share of Obama's debt is over $50,000. And it grows every day.

"Obama's policies are making it harder on women. The poverty rate for women -- the highest in 17 years. More women are unemployed under President Obama. More than 5.5 million women can't find work."

-- Narration from a new Romney campaign ad

Polls show that Mitt Romney has always lagged far behind President Obama when it comes to support from women and Hispanics. This week, the GOP presidential nominee focused much of his attention on appealing to those demographics.

The Romney campaign's "Dear Daughter" campaign ad features a fictional mother telling her newborn girl about female unemployment and poverty numbers, as well as the infant's share of "Obama's debt." The message: women are worse off since the president took office, and the future won't look any brighter if he wins a second term.

Let's check the Romney claims for factual accuracy and context.

The Facts

The national debt, including money owed to Social Security and Medicare recipients, stands at about $16 trillion. Meanwhile, the U.S. population was 314 million in September, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's population clock. That means the debt rate for each resident is roughly $51,000, which seems to cover the Romney ad's claim at first glance.

But Obama doesn't deserve all the blame for that rising number. After all, the national debt carries over from one administration to the next, growing larger whenever the president and Congress fail to balance the budget. Over the years, deficits have piled on top of deficits as the government borrowed money to meet its obligations.

Here's a useful graph that illustrates what the revenue and spending numbers looked like for the past 12 years -- the blue line represents spending, the red is for revenue, and the shaded areas shows recession periods.

The government ran a surplus during the later years of President Bill Clinton's time in office, but a new era of deficit spending started shortly after President George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001.

Multiple revenue-positive conditions led to the surpluses of the latter Clinton years, including higher taxes, efforts to control spending growth and a 1990s Dot-com bubble that led to a gusher of capital gains revenue. Likewise, a number of factors led to the Bush-year deficits: tax cuts, greater spending, two expensive wars and two recessions that further diminished tax revenue.

The deficits increased when Obama took office, as the government tried to stimulus-spend its way out of an economic tailspin and lawmakers and the president bickered over whether to close the gap with budget cuts, more taxes or a combination of the two -- an argument they still haven't resolved.

The current administration inherited about $10.6 trillion in debt, which means the current administration oversaw an increase of $5.4 trillion at best. With that in mind, a newborn daughter's share of "Obama's debt" would be about $17,200, although she would still be on the hook for an additional $34,000 from previous presidents and Congresses.

We should point out that Obama in 2008 used virtually the same attack that Romney relies on to hammer Bush for increasing the national debt. As we mentioned in a previous column, the former senator said this during a stump speech in Fargo, N.D.:

"Number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic."

As for poverty, the Romney ad correctly points out that the rate is higher for women that it's been in 17 years. The latest Census data show that 16.3 percent of females of all ages were living below the poverty level in 2011. That's the highest level since 1993.

But the numbers here deserve some context.

First, the female poverty rate has been rising since the sixth year of the Bush administration.

Second, the rise in poverty for women under Obama has been slightly slower than it was during the start of Bush's first term, when a less severe recession occurred. The rate increased .8 percentage points during the first three years of the Bush administration and .7 percentage points during the same period of Obama's tenure in the White House.

Finally, the rising poverty rate is not unique to women. The levels have increased fairly proportionally across demographics. The male rate, for instance, stood at 13.6 percent in 2011, representing an increase of .6 percentage points during Obama's term. That's a slight difference compared to the .7 percentage-point jump for women during the same period.

It's worth noting that poverty rates have historically been higher for women than men, so that's nothing new to the Obama administration.

Now for the claim about unemployment. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that nearly 5.7 million working-age women were unemployed in August, which more than justifies the Romney campaign's number and shows that women are worse off than they were before Obama became president.

But this number by itself paints an incomplete picture of what has happened during the Obama years. More than 200,000 women per month were joining the ranks of the unemployed before the president took office, so it's no surprise that the levels are now higher than when his administration began.

Furthermore, the female unemployment level is lower than it was during the November 2010 high of 6.2 million. We should note, however, that the number has fluctuated up and down since then, failing to show steady improvement for more than four months at a time.

Overall, the situation is improving, albeit slowly and with fits and starts.

The Pinocchio Test

The "Dear Daughter" ad blames Obama for all $16 trillion in national debt. But $10.6 trillion of that accrued during past administrations, so it's not right to suggest that a newborn's share of "Obama's debt" is $50,000. That number represents the child's share of the debt from all presidents and Congresses both past and present.

The ad accurately mentions that the female poverty rate has reached an historic high, but it ignores the fact that the numbers were rising before Obama took office, and they increased faster at times during the Bush years.

Finally, the ad uses a correct female unemployment figure, but it doesn't mention that women were losing jobs in droves when the president was sworn in, nor that the situation has improved since November 2010 -- although the trends have been erratic.

Overall, the Romney campaign earns two Pinocchio for its "Dear Daughter" ad.

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



834 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 21, 2012 Friday 9:53 PM EST


Scott Walker to Mitt Romney's campaign: Use Paul Ryan more;
The Wisconsin governor wants to see the GOP presidential campaign better utilize the vice presidential nominee.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 717 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX: 

If you love political ads, 2012 is your year. Big time.

Why Romney isn't licked yet, in two charts

Why Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax returns today

Claire McCaskill calls Todd Akin's views 'extreme' at first debate

Mitt Romney had the 'Worst Week in Washington' - again

Obama cracks 50 percent in three swing states

Why it's time for Moderate Mitt

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* Mitt Romney's campaign shouldn't restrain GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.), says Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R). Walker said in an interview that he was "enthused when Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan because I thought that was a signal that this guy was getting serious, he was getting bold," but he said he "hasn't seen that kind of passion I know that Paul has transferred over to our nominee." 

* Romney and Ryan are each in good health, according to assessments from their physicians. Romney takes Lipitor to lower his cholesterol but has "no physical impairments" that would complicate his ability to serve as president. Ryan suffers from airway hypersensitivity which is "occasionally treated with an as needed albuterol inhaler."

* President Obama sought to turn the tables against Romney' attacks directed at his remark at a Univision forum Thursday that "you can't change Washington from inside." "What kind of inside job is he talking about?" Obama asked at a campaign event in Virginia, a response to Romney's pledge to "get the job done from the inside." 

* Ann Romney's plane made an emergency landing in Colorado. Aides say that the plane was apparently filled with smoke and that nobody was hurt. 

* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has been cleared of wrongdoing by a House ethics panel that had been investigating whether she had run afoul of congressional rules when she called then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in 2008 on behalf of minority-owned banks, even as her husband held financial stake in one such institution. 

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Senatorial Committee in August, hauling $7.7 million to the $6.1 million raised by the Senate GOP's campaign arm. The DSCC ended the month with about $31 million in the bank, which was more than the NRSC's $28.9 million. 

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* At a Friday morning news conference where he was flanked by top recruits, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) said winning the House majority is "in range" for his party, but he stopped short of predicting a takeover. "We are sitting in their red zone," Israel said. Democrats need to net 25 sets in November to seize back the majority.

* Ryan received boos and applause when he addressed the AARP on Friday. He was booed when he pledged to repeal the federal health care law spearheaded by Obama. 

* The NRSC is running a new TV ad in the Montana Senate race featuring a rancher who criticizes Sen. Jon Tester's  (D) vote for the estate tax. The ad makes an emotional appeal - at one point the rancher, who said his dad just passed away, chokes up as he considers the impact of the tax on his mother.

* Former congressman Rick Hill (R) and Attorney General Steve Bullock (D) are running about even in the Montana governor's race, according to a new Mason Dixon Polling & Research survey showing Bullock at 44 percent and Hill at 43 percent. 

* The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee in August, bringing in $11.6 million to the NRCC's $6.8 million. But the NRCC ended the month with more money in the bank - $49.8 million, while the DCCC banked about $40 million. 

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn't satisfied with the tax returns Romney released on Friday, claiming Romney is "hiding something." Reid previously alleged that Romney didn't pay any taxes for a decade.

THE FIX MIX: 

The friendly backpacker. 

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



835 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 21, 2012 Friday 9:16 PM EST


Ryan to attack Obamacare at AARP;
Advance excerpts of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's remarks at an AARP event in New Orleans today show that he will devote much of his time to attacking President Obama's health-care plan as dangerous for seniors.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 190 words


Advance excerpts of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's remarks at an AARP event in New Orleans today show that he will devote much of his time to attacking President Obama's health-care plan as dangerous for seniors.  

"The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare, because it represents the worst of both worlds," he plans to say. "It weakens Medicare for today's seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation. First, it funnels $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. Second, it puts 15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare's future."

Under the Republican plan, he argues, "seniors can always afford Medicare coverage - no exceptions."

The same cuts to future Medicare spending are in Ryan's budget, a proposal he and Mitt Romney have avoided discussing on the trail. 

Obama is out with a new ad focused on the Ryan budget, saying it would turn Medicare into a "voucher system" that could raise seniors' costs by up to $6,400 a year. But that attack relies on an outdated, less generous version of Ryan's plan. The ad is airing in Colorado, Florida, and Iowa.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



836 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 21, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Romney says Obama has thrown in 'white flag'


BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson


SECTION: A section; Pg. A07


LENGTH: 620 words


SARASOTA, Fla. - Mitt Romney spent much of Thursday out of public view, huddling with advisers and speaking to donors at three high-dollar fundraisers, even as prominent conservatives griped about Romney's spare schedule.

Romney held one public rally Thursday, appearing on stage for roughly 20 minutes.

But the former Massachusetts governor was invigorated on the stump, nearly shouting himself hoarse at times as he seized on President Obama's comment at a Univision forum that he couldn't change Washington from the inside.

"The president today threw in the white flag of surrender again. He said he can't change Washington from the inside. He can only change it from outside," Romney told a rally of about 4,500 people. "Well, we're going to give him that chance in November. He is going outside.

"I can change Washington, and I will change Washington," he said. "We'll get the job done from the inside. Republicans and Democrats will come together. He can't do it. His slogan was 'Yes, we can'; his slogan now is 'No, I can't.' This is time for a new president."

The Romney campaign began the day promising a more detailed discussion of issues, beefed-up public appearances and a greater television presence. The campaign released a television ad on Medicare featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who will be prominent in Romney's attempts to attract Latino voters in Florida and across the country. Romney lags behind Obama among Latinos 68 percent to 26 percent, according to the latest tracking poll by Latino Decisions.

In the 30-second ad, Rubio says: "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan get it. Medicare is going broke. That's not politics. It's math. Anyone who wants to leave Medicare like it is, is for letting it go bankrupt. My mother's 81 and depends on Medicare. . . . We can save Medicare without changing hers, but only if younger Americans accept that our Medicare will be different than our parents' when we retire in 30 years. But after all they did for us, isn't that the least we can do?"

The campaign has started to air the video at campaign events.

Next week, Ann Romney will sit for her first late-night interview, appearing Tuesday on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

Meanwhile, her husband is trying to reframe remarks caught on videotape at a fundraiser in Florida last May.

"This is a campaign about all of America, about the poor who want to break into the middle class, about the middle class who [we] want to give a break to," Romney said. "They're really struggling, the middle class, with those higher costs and lower take-home pay. I want to help all Americans, and my five points will do it," a reference to his economic plan.

Gallup's latest poll has the race tied at 47 percent to 47 percent.

Asked if he intended to campaign harder over the next weeks, Romney didn't exactly answer.

"Ha ha. We're in the stretch, aren't we? Look at those clouds. It's beautiful," he said, pointing to the sky. "Look at those things."

The news of his wife's late-night appearance came on the heels of an announcement that the president and Michelle Obama will appear on "The View" on Tuesday.

The Romney campaign issued a statement Wednesday saying that Mitt and Ann Romney would love to visit the daytime talk show in October, but the Obamas beat them to it Thursday.

In the now famous recording of his May speech to a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., Romney describes "The View" as "high-risk," because most of the women who host the popular show are outspoken Obama supporters.

"If you can't handle four sharp-tongued women, how are you going to handle the country?" Sherri Shepherd, one of the hosts, said Wednesday.

hendersonn@washpost.com

Emily Yahr contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



837 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 21, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Romney campaign's cash flow hits a snag


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A section; Pg. A06


LENGTH: 601 words


The financial tide has turned against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his key allies, who spent more than they brought in and were outraised by President Obama during the month of August, according to disclosures filed Thursday.

Romney's presidential campaign committee raised nearly $67 million last month - a strong figure - but spent about the same amount building its campaign organization and responding to a barrage of attack ads from Obama and his allies. Even so, the campaign spent just $13.7 million on ads, which was less than the $15 million it spent in July.

Romney was also forced to take out a $20 million loan because the campaign had run out of money raised during the primary season. The campaign also fell behind in its attempts to reach grass-roots donors despite the addition of tea party favorite Paul Ryan to the ticket, records show.

The spending left the campaign with about $50 million cash on hand at the start of September, not including the remaining debt, according to the disclosures.

Obama's campaign account, by contrast, had nearly $90 million on hand going into September, even after spending $83 million in August. Officials said Obama had 1.19 million donors last month - more than a third of its total for the 2012 cycle.

The main super PAC supporting Romney, called Restore Our Future, spent nearly three times as much as it raised in August, devoting more than $20 million to broadcast ads, filings show. The group reported having $6 million left on Aug. 31.

On Aug. 31, Romney handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses to top employees, including $37,500 to national political director Richard Beeson and $25,000 each to a half dozen others, the records show.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC devoted to helping Obama that has lagged far behind its conservative rivals, posted its strongest month in August by raising $10.1 million, including $2 million from hedge-fund manager Jim Simons. The group spent $9.5 million and had $4.8 million in cash.

The numbers signal a financial shift away from the Republicans after a summer of Democratic hand-wringing over fundraising. The Obama campaign argues it is likely to be outmatched by conservative super PACs and nonprofit groups, which can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals and corporations and are working to build a ground game to match them.

The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee had outraised Obama and the Democratic National Committee for three months starting in May. But the Obama team edged out Romney and the GOP last month by $114 million to $112 million, according to general numbers announced earlier this month.

In addition to his cash-flow problems, Romney had more trouble raising money from grass-roots donors in August, with just 14 percent of his total coming from contributions of $200 or less - a significant drop from the month before. Obama collected about 30 percent of his August haul from donors giving $200 or less.

Romney, however, continued to do well among the wealthiest donors who are able to legally give more than $70,000 to the Romney campaign, the RNC and associated committees. Romney and the RNC say they had a total of $170 million in cash on hand at the end of August.

Most of that money, however, went to allied committees and remains outside Romney's direct control, which could have serious ramifications for ad purchases and other strategy in the last six weeks of the campaign. Party committees and outside groups do not qualify for the lowest ad rates, meaning their money does not go as far in media spending.

eggend@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



838 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 21, 2012 Friday 4:47 PM EST


An opening for Romney on foreign policy?;
Unrest abroad gives Romney another chance to draw distinctions between his foreign policy and Obama's


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 270 words


Mitt Romney has largely stayed away from foreign policy since his critical and poorly-received response to the attacks in Libya. But with more protests and violence across the Mideast, along with continuing pressure on the White House over the attack in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, will he try again?  

In Pakistan, at least 15 people have been killed and scores injured in riots related to the anti-Muslim film that first sparked unrest last week:

The Obama administration has purchased ads on a half-dozen Pakistani television stations disavowing the video. The $70,000 ad buy demonstrates the depth of U.S. concern about the volatility of Pakistan, where several militant jihadist groups - including the Taliban - are based in tribal areas and operate largely free of Islamabad's writ.

The ad buy follows an attack on the U.S. embassy in Tunisia Monday, along with non-violent protests in a handful of other countries. In Israel, gunmen killed one soldier and wounded another Friday after crossing the border from Egypt.

President Obama was pressed on embassy security in a Univision town hall Thursday, and on Friday morning, MSNBC's Chuck Todd said it looked like the White House was "dragging its feet" in explaining what had happened in Libya. Officials have described the attack as "terrorism," while Obama himself has stopped short of that label. 

With scrutiny shifting away from Romney and onto Obama's handling of the situation,  there may be room for Romney to criticize the administration response and explain how he would handle international relations differently, if he chooses to do it.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



839 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 21, 2012 Friday 4:34 PM EST


Ad Watch: Rubio speaks Spanish for Romney;
Florida senator pitches Medicare plan to Spanish-speaking voters.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 124 words


Mitt Romney, "Salvará"

What it says: Rubio, in Spanish: "Medicare is how my mom gets her medicine and it's what allowed my father to live his final days with dignity. Mitt Romney understands that my generation will have to accept changes in order to protect Medicare now for our elderly."

What it means: Romney isn't just starting to use Rubio as a popular and eloquent young Republican, but as a bridge to reach Hispanic voters. 

Who will see it: Romney currently has bought amounts of ad time on Spanish-language television for this week in Colorado, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, according a Republican media buyer. In general, Obama has spent far more on Spanish-language ads. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



840 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 21, 2012 Friday
Regional Edition


Romney says Obama has thrown in 'white flag'


BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A07


LENGTH: 615 words


DATELINE: SARASOTA, FLA.


SARASOTA, Fla. - Mitt Romney spent much of Thursday out of public view, huddling with advisers and speaking to donors at three high-dollar fundraisers, even as prominent conservatives griped about Romney's spare schedule.

Romney held one public rally Thursday, appearing on stage for roughly 20 minutes.

But the former Massachusetts governor was invigorated on the stump, nearly shouting himself hoarse at times as he seized on President Obama's comment at a Univision forum that he couldn't change Washington from the inside.

"The president today threw in the white flag of surrender again. He said he can't change Washington from the inside. He can only change it from outside," Romney told a rally of about 4,500 people. "Well, we're going to give him that chance in November. He is going outside.

"I can change Washington, and I will change Washington," he said. "We'll get the job done from the inside. Republicans and Democrats will come together. He can't do it. His slogan was 'Yes, we can'; his slogan now is 'No, I can't.' This is time for a new president."

The Romney campaign began the day promising a more detailed discussion of issues, beefed-up public appearances and a greater television presence. The campaign released a television ad on Medicare featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who will be prominent in Romney's attempts to attract Latino voters in Florida and across the country. Romney lags behind Obama among Latinos 68 percent to 26 percent, according to the latest tracking poll by Latino Decisions.

In the 30-second ad, Rubio says: "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan get it. Medicare is going broke. That's not politics. It's math. Anyone who wants to leave Medicare like it is, is for letting it go bankrupt. My mother's 81 and depends on Medicare. . . . We can save Medicare without changing hers, but only if younger Americans accept that our Medicare will be different than our parents' when we retire in 30 years. But after all they did for us, isn't that the least we can do?"

The campaign has started to air the video at campaign events.

Next week, Ann Romney will sit for her first late-night interview, appearing Tuesday on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

Meanwhile, her husband is trying to reframe remarks caught on videotape at a fundraiser in Florida last May.

"This is a campaign about all of America, about the poor who want to break into the middle class, about the middle class who [we] want to give a break to," Romney said. "They're really struggling, the middle class, with those higher costs and lower take-home pay. I want to help all Americans, and my five points will do it," a reference to his economic plan.

Gallup's latest poll has the race tied at 47 percent to 47 percent.

Asked if he intended to campaign harder over the next weeks, Romney didn't exactly answer.

"Ha ha. We're in the stretch, aren't we? Look at those clouds. It's beautiful," he said, pointing to the sky. "Look at those things."

The news of his wife's late-night appearance came on the heels of an announcement that the president and Michelle Obama will appear on "The View" on Tuesday.

The Romney campaign issued a statement Wednesday saying that Mitt and Ann Romney would love to visit the daytime talk show in October, but the Obamas beat them to it Thursday.

In the now famous recording of his May speech to a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., Romney describes "The View" as "high-risk," because most of the women who host the popular show are outspoken Obama supporters.

"If you can't handle four sharp-tongued women, how are you going to handle the country?" Sherri Shepherd, one of the hosts, said Wednesday.

hendersonn@washpost.com

Emily Yahr contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



841 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 21, 2012 Friday
Met 2 Edition


Romney campaign's cash flow hits a snag


BYLINE: Dan Eggen


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A06


LENGTH: 601 words


The financial tide has turned against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his key allies, who spent more than they brought in and were outraised by President Obama during the month of August, according to disclosures filed Thursday.

Romney's presidential campaign committee raised nearly $67 million last month - a strong figure - but spent about the same amount building its campaign organization and responding to a barrage of attack ads from Obama and his allies. Even so, the campaign spent just $13.7 million on ads, which was less than the $15â[#x20ac][#x201a]million it spent in July.

Romney was also forced to take out a $20 million loan because the campaign had run out of money raised during the primary season. The campaign also fell behind in its attempts to reach grass-roots donors despite the addition of tea party favorite Paul Ryan to the ticket, records show.

The spending left the campaign with about $50 million cash on hand at the start of September, not including the remaining debt, according to the disclosures.

Obama's campaign account, by contrast, had nearly $90 million on hand going into September, even after spending $83 million in August. Officials said Obama had 1.19 million donors last month - more than a third of its total for the 2012 cycle.

The main super PAC supporting Romney, called Restore Our Future, spent nearly three times as much as it raised in August, devoting more than $20â[#x20ac][#x201a]million to broadcast ads, filings show. The group reported having $6 million left on Aug. 31.

On Aug. 31, Romney handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses to top employees, including $37,500 to national political director Richard Beeson and $25,000 each to a half dozen others, the records show.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC devoted to helping Obama that has lagged far behind its conservative rivals, posted its strongest month in August by raising $10.1 million, including $2 million from hedge-fund manager Jim Simons. The group spent $9.5 million and had $4.8 million in cash.

The numbers signal a financial shift away from the Republicans after a summer of Democratic hand-wringing over fundraising. The Obama campaign argues it is likely to be outmatched by conservative super PACs and nonprofit groups, which can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals and corporations and are working to build a ground game to match them.

The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee had outraised Obama and the Democratic National Committee for three months starting in May. But the Obama team edged out Romney and the GOP last month by $114 million to $112 million, according to general numbers announced earlier this month.

In addition to his cash-flow problems, Romney had more trouble raising money from grass-roots donors in August, with just 14 percent of his total coming from contributions of $200 or less - a significant drop from the month before. Obama collected about 30 percent of his August haul from donors giving $200 or less.

Romney, however, continued to do well among the wealthiest donors who are able to legally give more than $70,000 to the Romney campaign, the RNC and associated committees. Romney and the RNC say they had a total of $170 million in cash on hand at the end of August.

Most of that money, however, went to allied committees and remains outside Romney's direct control, which could have serious ramifications for ad purchases and other strategy in the last six weeks of the campaign. Party committees and outside groups do not qualify for the lowest ad rates, meaning their money does not go as far in media spending.

eggend@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 21, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



842 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


'Failing American Families'


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 15


LENGTH: 172 words


With its matter-of-fact "this or that" cadence, this 30-second ad recalls the famous 1980s "This is your brain on drugs" commercials. "This was household income when President Obama took office; this was the national debt," an announcer says as a bar chart adjusts accordingly, with the national debt bar growing as the income bar falls.

The image then shifts to Mr. Romney explaining to an audience that he would cut government spending. "We can't keep buying and spending and passing on debts to our kids. And I'll stop it," he says as a shot of a woman in a cap and gown hugging a child is shown.

By highlighting the drop in average household income - which the ad puts in the context of the Obama presidency, ignoring that incomes began falling when George W. Bush was still in office - Mr. Romney is reinforcing a point he makes repeatedly: that Americans are not better off today than they were four years ago.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROMNEY FOR PRESIDENT)


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/failing-american-families/


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



843 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Campaign Cautious With Ad Budget, Even in Ke y States


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 1 3


LENGTH: 940 words


Mitt Romney has had a light campaign schedule lately. He held his first rally in five days on We dnesday night.

And there is another place where his presence is oddly lacking : in the television ad wars.

Despite what appears to be a plump bank account and an in-house production studio that cranks out multiple commerci als a day, Mr. Romney's campaign has been tightfisted with its advertising budge t, leaving him at a disadvantage in several crucial states as President Obama bl ankets them with ads.

One major reason appears to be that Mr. Romney's camp aign finances have been significantly less robust than recent headlines would su ggest. Much of the more than $300 million the campaign reported raising this sum mer is earmarked for the Republican National Committee, state Republican organiz ations and Congressional races, limiting the money Mr. Romney's own campaign has to spend.

With polls showing President Obama widening his lead in some of these states and the race a dead heat in others, Mr. Romney's lack of a full-thr ottle media campaign is risky, especially as he struggles to get his message out over the din of news about his campaign's recent setbacks.

In some states the disparity is striking. Mr. Obama and his allies are handily outspending Mr. Romney and the conservative ''super PACs'' working on his behalf in Colorado, O hio and New Hampshire.

And in states like Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Virgini a, where the Romney and Obama forces are roughly matching their spending dollar for dollar, the super PACs are responsible for nearly half the advertising that is benefiting the Republican nominee.

After three weeks of bad news for Mr. Romney -- first that he received a negligible bounce from his convention, then that Mr. Obama was overtaking him in the polls and finally that he had been secr etly recorded disparaging the president's supporters as government-dependent fre eloaders -- the lack of a more forceful advertising offensive is one more way th at the Romney campaign finds its message obscured.

Each day that slips by i s a loss of precious television time in an air war that is only going to grow he avier and louder, making it difficult for any ad to leave a lasting impact.

''In a world where we know advertising imbalances lend opportunities for persua sion, it is surprising that any campaign would allow imbalances to continue,'' s aid Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. ''Especial ly following several weeks of ad dominance by the opponent.''

Mr. Romney's absence from the air made sense before the party's convention in late August, si nce the campaign's cash flow became so slow over the summer that it was forced t o borrow $20 million to carry it through the event, when his formal nomination f reed up tens of millions of dollars for the general election.

Yet at the sa me time Romney aides worked hard to project the image of a fund-raising machine far outpacing the president's.

Romney aides released informal dollar figure s that lumped several pools of money -- some available for his use, others not - - into a single figure, providing a perception greater than reality: $106 millio n in June and $101 million in July, far more than Mr. Obama and the Democrats.<P A> Yet those figures obscured the fact that most of the money Mr. Romney was ra ising was reserved for those other political entities like the Republican Nation al Committee.

And the party committee, which Mr. Romney helped propel to re cord-breaking receipts in July, is allowed to spend only about $22 million on ad vertising that is coordinated with Mr. Romney.

Even now, a large though unk nown portion of Mr. Romney's fund-raising is not going directly into his campaig n account.

A closer look at Mr. Romney's own filings revealed that Mr. Obam a, while trailing in overall party fund-raising, was pulling far more money than Mr. Romney into his campaign account, the most useful and flexible dollars a ca ndidate has to spend, in part because of strong collection from small donors who could give again and again without hitting federal limits.

Mr. Romney's ai des declined to discuss their advertising plans, saying that unlike the Obama ca mpaign, which has reserved more than $40 million in time through Election Day, i t will not telegraph its intentions for competitors to see.

As of the end o f July, the Republican Party had an additional $15 million left to spend in coor dination with Mr. Romney before it reaches its federal spending limits. And thou gh no one knows the precise amounts, the Romney campaign will have millions at i ts disposal that it can drop into a television market at any given moment.

So far it is only buying several days or a week of advertising at a time, a sign that it is being extremely frugal. According to a review of spending figures pr ovided by a group that tracks political advertising, from Sept. 10 through Sept. 24, Mr. Romney and his allies reserved $3.7 million in advertising time in Ohio . That compared with $5.2 million for Mr. Obama and his allies.

In Colorado , Mr. Romney is being outspent $2.2 million to $1.5 million during that same per iod. In New Hampshire, Mr. Obama is spending $1.2 million, compared with $380,00 0 to benefit Mr. Romney. The vast majority of that is coming not from the Romney campaign but from American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC.

Asked a bout the campaign's budget on Wednesday, Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney's finance cha irman, said simply, ''We have spent our money smartly and efficiently.''

<U RL>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/politics/romney-campaign-cautious-with-a d-budget-even-in-key-states.html


URL:


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



844 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


'Dear Daughter'


BYLINE: By JER EMY W. PETERS


SECTION: ; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 15


LENGTH: 194 words


Mr. Romney has a lot of catching up to do among women. The la test New York Times/CBS News poll has Mr. Obama up by 12 percentage points.

I n this ad, the Romney campaign highlights economic statistics that, standing on their own, suggest that the economic picture for women is far worse than it is f or men.

"That's what Obama's policies have done for women," an a nnouncer says, in a rebuttal to Mr. Obama's claims that Republicans have waged a "war on women." As a chubby-cheeked baby girl plays in her mother's arms, the a nnouncer says, "Welcome, daughter."

It is true, as the ad points out, that the poverty level among women, at 16.3 percent, is the highest in 17 years, acco rding to the Census Bureau. But the unemployment rate for men is 8.3 percent; fo r women it is 7.8 percent. The ad also notes that more than 5.5 million women ar e unemployed, about a half-million more than when Mr. Obama took office. But the ad does not say that the number of unemployed women started to rise sharply in 2008, before he took office, and has come down from a peak of 6.4 million in 201 0.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/dear-daughter/


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROMNEY FOR PRESID ENT)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



845 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Three New Romney Ads Focus on Women


BYLINE: By JE REMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A< PG>15; Column 0; Politics


LENGTH: 91 words


From now until Election Day, Mitt Romney's campaign has a si mple advertising story line to stick to. It begins with the failure of President Obama to repair the economy and ends by explaining how a President Romney will succeed when Mr. Obama could not.

A trio of new television commercials releas ed this week begins making that case -- a more urgent task now that Mr. Romney h as spent the past few days explaining his contentious remarks at a fund-raiser r ather than focusing on his message.

Starring in all three ads: w omen. JEREMY W. PETERS


URL:


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



846 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Mitt's Sn ake-Bit Season


BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 27


LENGTH: 812 words


Our topic for today is: When Bad Thing s Happen to Mitt Romney.

Really, it's been the worst run of disasters this si de of the Mayan calendar. The Republicans' woes started last Friday, when Ann an d Mitt filmed a TV interview in which they entertained the kind of personal ques tions that most candidates learned to avoid after Bill Clinton did that boxers-v ersus-briefs thing. Asked what he wears to bed, Mitt said: ''I think the best an swer is: as little as possible.''

Euww.

Then, over the week end, Romney aides began spilling their guts about how other staffers had screwed up the Republicans' bounce-free convention. In an attempt to change the convers ation, the campaign announced that it had just realized the nation wants Romney to say what he'd actually do as president. Voters ''are eager to hear more detai ls about policies to turn our economy around,'' said an adviser, Ed Gillespie.<P A> In search of just such specificity, the scoop-hungry Christian Broadcasting Network asked Paul Ryan if he would continue refusing to identify exactly what t ax loopholes the Romney administration would close in order to turn our economy around.

''Yes,'' said Ryan, who then veered into a disquisition about somet hing that once happened to Tip O'Neill.

You may be wondering whatever becam e of Ryan, who was such a big sensation when Romney first picked him as a runnin g mate. Since Tampa, he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, resurfac ing every now and then to put up another ad for re-election to his House seat in Wisconsin.

It's not all that unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to go low-profile. And it is totally not true that Mitt Romney strapped Paul Ryan to the top of a car and drove him to Canada. Stop spreading rumors!

Next, M other Jones published that video of the fund-raiser in Boca Raton in which Romne y said that 47 percent of the country is composed of moochers who want to confis cate the earnings of hard-working stockbrokers and spend it on caviar and dialys is treatments.

''So my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never c onvince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their li ves,'' Romney decreed, undoubtedly more in sorrow than in anger.

Then, Repu blican Senate candidates in tight races began distancing themselves from the top of the ticket.

Ann Romney suggested Mitt was ''taken out of context,'' in what was undoubtedly meant as a helpful comment.

''All of us make mistakes ,'' said President Obama, in what probably wasn't.

''Obviously inarticulate ,'' decreed Paul Ryan, popping up from a gopher hole somewhere in Nevada.

T he fund-raiser, a $50,000-a-pop sit-down dinner, was hosted by Marc Leder, a fin ancier who The New York Post reported as having a ''wild party'' last summer in the Hamptons ''where guests cavorted nude in the pool'' while ''scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms.'' You cannot blame Romney for that. If presidenti al candidates had to avoid all multimillionaires who held parties with naked gue sts and Russians on platforms, there would be no money for misleading TV commerc ials.

The video was a reminder of how ghastly this business of running for president can be. The guests seemed more interested in the breadbasket than the candidate. Romney was blathering away in the manner of somebody trying to stay a wake during the 12th hour of a cross-country drive.

On Tuesday, moving to t amp down criticism that he was a conversational disaster area, Romney told Fox's Neil Cavuto: ''Well, we were, of course, talking about a campaign and how he's going to get close to half the votes. I'm going to get half the vote, approximat ely. I hope -- I want to get 50.1 percent or more.''

With that out of the w ay, Romney explained that his real point had not been to criticize people who do n't pay income taxes, but merely to point out that he wanted them to make more m oney. ''I think people would like to be paying taxes,'' added the quarter-billio naire whose own eagerness to be part of the solution is a matter of public recor d.

How did he let things slip out of control? Maybe the answer lies back w ith that Ann-and-Mitt interview, which was on ''Live With Kelly and Michael.'' A sked about his preferences when it came to heroines of low-end reality TV shows, the future presidential candidate enthusiastically announced: ''I'm kind of a S nooki fan. Look how tiny she's gotten. She's lost weight and she's energetic. I mean, just her sparkplug personality is kind of fun.''

It could be worse. H e could have announced that he enjoys spending his free hours watching ''Hoarder s'' marathons. But, still, it's weird that Mitt Romney appears to think a lot ab out Snooki. Is it possible that while he's being dragged around from one fund-ra iser to the next, he spends his spare time watching ''Jersey Shore'' reruns in t he limo?

That would explain so much.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/201 2/09/20/opinion/collins-mitts-snake-bite-season.html


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



847 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


On Air and Before Audiences, Romney Makes Push f or Hispanic Vote


BYLINE: By MICHAEL BARBARO; Julia Preston contributed reporting f rom New York.


SECTION: Section A<P G>15; Column 0; Politics


LENGTH: 910 words


MIAMI -- Mitt Romney, hunting for an electoral edge in swing states, is intensifying his push for Hispanic voters, ratcheting up his Spanish- language advertising, deploying a Spanish-speaking son to court Latino leaders a nd putting himself in front of a growing number of Hispanic audiences.

It is an uphill climb, with polls showing that President Obama holds a commanding lead among Latino voters, just as he did four years ago. But as Mr. Romney tries to build political momentum in the dwindling weeks of the campaign, aides said they viewed Hispanics, whose unemployment numbers remain higher than that of the gen eral population, as a potentially decisive constituency in states like Florida, Nevada, Colorado and Virginia.

On Wednesday, Mr. Romney brought his conspicuous outreach to Miami, where he participated in a candidate forum h osted by Univision, the dominant Spanish-language television network in the coun try, and attended a late night ''Juntos con Romney'' (''Together With Romney'') rally.

Greeting the forum's hosts briefly in Spanish, Mr. Romney expressed alarm over the economic struggles of Hispanic Americans and portrayed Mr. Obama as having failed to improve their circumstances.

''I am concerned about th e fact that we have gone for over 50 months with unemployment above 10 percent a mong Hispanic Americans,'' Mr. Romney said. ''I am concerned about the fact that so many young Hispanic Americans drop out of high school, don't get the kind of education they need for the skills that they have to have for tomorrow.''

Some of his most intriguing remarks, though, were not about Hispanics, but abou t gay and lesbian couples. In response to a question, he said that they should b e able to ''raise a family as they would choose.'' In the past, he has sought to avoid discussing issues like adoption by gay parents, which many social and rel igious conservatives oppose.

Asked what advice he would give his children and grandchildren if they were gay and wished to marry, Mr. Romney replied: ''We ll, my kids are all married, so I'd be surprised,'' before reiterating that he b elieves that marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples.

Mr. Rom ney's brutal primary campaign at times put him at odds with quarters of the Hisp anic community, a fact that the hosts of the Univision forum did not shy from. T hey posed pointed questions about illegal immigrants and whether the Spanish lan guage has a place in American life. (''Spanish,'' Mr. Romney said, quoting a fri end, ''is the language of our heritage. English is the language of opportunity.' ')

Despite repeated inquiries, Mr. Romney avoided saying whether he would c ontinue a program to suspend deportations of young illegal immigrants announced in June by Mr. Obama. Instead he accused the president of using immigration as a ''political football,'' and he returned to a promise to ''put in place a perman ent solution'' to illegal immigration.

Pressed for details, Mr. Romney said again that he would support giving legal permanent residence to illegal immigra nts who serve in the military. But he also suggested he would support another bi g piece of a bill in Congress known as the Dream Act. ''Kids that get higher edu cation could get permanent residence,'' Mr. Romney said, in what appeared to be another step away from his position during the nominating contests, when he said he opposed the Dream Act.

Mr. Romney rejected mass deportation of illegal immigrants, but he sidestepped a question about whether he still supported enco uraging ''self-deportation'' -- encouraging such immigrants to leave the country by strictly enforcing immigration rules, a position he has advocated before.<PA > ''We are not going to round up people around the country and deport them,'' h e said. ''Our system is not to deport people.''

Aides to Mr. Romney said th at they are devoting significant resources to the Hispanic vote. They have quiet ly built up a sizable staff of operatives around the country, including 13 paid workers in Florida alone, a state with a large and politically engaged populatio n of Hispanics.

After lagging well behind Mr. Obama in spending on Spanish -language advertising for months, Mr. Romney has started to catch up in a few ma rkets like Miami. Between mid-April and mid-September, Mr. Romney and the Republ ican National Committee spent $1.8 million on such ads in the Miami area, just a hair below what Mr. Obama spent during that period, according to Kantar Media, which tracks television advertising nationwide.

Still, Mr. Obama has signif icantly outgunned Mr. Romney nationally, devoting nearly twice as much money on Spanish-language commercials.

Alberto Martinez, an adviser, said the Romne y campaign was organizing ''the most aggressive Hispanic outreach of any Republi can presidential campaign.''

''We are playing in a lot more states than man y Republican presidential candidates have done,'' he said.

But a national poll of likely voters, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and t he Press, found that 72 percent of Hispanics intended to support Mr. Obama, comp ared with 22 percent for Mr. Romney.

Mr. Romney has acknowledged that disad vantage. But during a rally on Wednesday night in Miami, surrounded by Spanish s igns and introduced by his son Craig in Spanish, he argued that the Republican P arty had earned the affections of Hispanic voters.

''This party,'' he said , ''is the natural home for Hispanic-Americans.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/politics/in-ads-and-before -audiences-romney-bids-for-latino-vote.html


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO: In Miami on Wednesday, Mitt Romney participated in a forum hosted by Univision, a Spanish-language television network. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK T IMES)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



848 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Underemployed and Overlooked, Struggling Young Ad ults Are a Question Mark


BYLINE: By SUSAN SAULNY; Robbie Brown contributed reporti ng from Atlanta, Dan Frosch from Denver and Steven Yaccino from Chicago.


SECTION: Section A<PG >13; Column 0; Politics


LENGTH: 1277 words


OR LANDO, Fla. -- Millions of struggling working-class young adults, many in battle ground states like Florida, Colorado and Wisconsin, are up for grabs in this ele ction, making up what experts call one of the most potentially powerful but ofte n overlooked voting blocs.

Voter turnout efforts tend to focus on university campuses and young professionals who have time and money to spend on campaigns. But in several tossup states this year, legions of eligible voters are young, jo bless or underemployed, and lacking in formal education beyond high school. Unde cided between the presidential candidates, and often discouraged, they are offer ing openings for both parties to make gains, experts say.

''Wha t we know about non-college young voters is that they are tied to neither party, and they are far more independent than anything,'' said Jefrey Pollock, preside nt of the Global Strategy Group, a polling firm for Priorities USA Action, the ' 'super PAC'' that supports President Obama.

Across the country, roughly 18 million young adults -- more than 40 percent of eligible voters 18 to 29 -- do not have, and are not now pursuing, college degrees. And their unemployment rate is more than twice that of their college-educated peers.

The Obama and Rom ney campaigns are working to tailor messages to this group, one of the most chal lenging to get to the polls. The largest segment is white, and polls suggest it favors the conservative fiscal stances of Republicans. But among young adults in general, who tend to be socially liberal, Democrats could have the upper hand.< PA> Matt Ely, 25, who works two restaurant jobs as a server and a cook in Green Bay, Wis., laments that even after a 53-hour workweek, he still lives ''paychec k to paycheck.'' Mr. Ely had enrolled in technical college, but toward the end o f his program it did not seem likely that he would find a job, so he dropped out to save tuition money.

He is opposed to the Republican plan for tax cuts for upper income earners, but does not think Democrats have good ideas, either. ''They're all a bunch of rich people that I really don't feel like care about me anyway,'' he said.

Mr. Ely's comments highlight one of the central complai nts expressed by young adults who are poor: that their concerns are neglected. < PA> A video that surfaced this week of Mitt Romney speaking critically at a pri vate fund-raiser of people who depend on government programs or who pay no feder al income tax seemed to reinforce that narrative. ''My job is not to worry about those people,'' Mr. Romney said of his campaign strategy.

How was that me ssage received by Mr. Ely, for instance? ''It was a really stupid thing to say,' ' he said. ''Definitely doesn't make him look any better in my eyes.''

Stil l, the Romney campaign is relying heavily on the Internet and social media to ma ke its pitch to financially distressed young adults, some of whom depend on gove rnment food stamps and unemployment checks.

''The Obama economy has created a lost generation,'' said Joshua Baca, the Romney campaign's national coalition s director. ''Hope is on the way. That's what we're saying. You're going to have a better opportunity to get a job and a college education and a better opportun ity to succeed if we elect Mitt Romney president.''

The Obama campaign is i nvesting in social media, too, and counting on its extensive ground operation to carry a message: ''President Obama is laying the foundation for long-term growt h of this generation,'' said Clo Ewing, a campaign spokeswoman, ''by expanding a ccess to quality, affordable health care for young people, investing in college and job training that ensures they're ready to succeed in the work force, and in vesting in a manufacturing and clean energy sector that's creating the jobs of t oday and tomorrow.''

Experts say that the segment of young working-class pe ople who are struggling may appear disengaged, but that they are also highly per suadable. ''Extensive research shows that if you ask young people to volunteer o r vote, they respond at high rates,'' said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts Universit y.

In a report released in August, researchers from the center found that t he most important factor in explaining low levels of civic participation may not be apathy but merely ''an absence of opportunity and recruitment.'' The report suggested that being ''personally and explicitly asked'' is perhaps the most imp ortant catalyst that motivates young people without college degrees to take poli tical action.

Yasmin Kenny, a Florida resident, said she intended to vote f or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. Ms. Kenny said she had studied democra cy in college, before she had to leave for financial reasons. She described hers elf as ''homeless-ish,'' because all her possessions are in boxes and she sleeps wherever relatives will give her space.

Still, Ms. Kenny, 28, who earns $ 4.65 an hour as a server at a catering company in Tampa, suggested that she coul d be open to persuasion from the major campaigns.

''Who's talking about po or people? About working people?'' she said. ''I hear people say we have a probl em with youth apathy. It's not a matter of apathy, to me. It's a matter of youth recognition that the options are not sufficient.''

Matthew Pastrana, who l ost his stockroom job, his Toyota and the apartment he shared in Orlando last ye ar, recounted the many exhausting hours spent walking along highways because he could not always afford the luxury of catching a bus.

He is not sure whom he will vote for, if he votes at all.

''I got my own worries to think abou t,'' said Mr. Pastrana, who is 21.

The director of the charity where Mr. Pa strana turned for help, the Community Food and Outreach Center, said he saw many young people in crisis. ''The economics they face dominate their political view s, but they're conflicted,'' said Andrae Bailey, the director. ''They don't know if it's Obama's politics that failed them, or if it's the Republican conservati ve platform that they're told led to the recession. When the 20-somethings figur e out who to blame, that's going to shift the electorate for years to come.'' <P A> Shaun Clancy, an unemployed 29-year-old in DuBois, Pa., had a theater schola rship, but even with tuition help he could not afford books and housing and left college. His unemployment benefits were extended this year, which makes him thi nk about possibly voting for Mr. Obama.

''Some of us are working our rear s off trying to make something of ourselves,'' he said, ''and in this economy, i t's really hard.''

At a recent jobs fair in Atlanta, Latasha Kelly, 22, sai d she was distressed by the hundreds of people who also came out. Ms. Kelly drop ped out of college four years ago because she could not afford it. She has compl eted a city-sponsored job training program in customer service. If she is lucky, she says, she will find work at a store like Walmart.

Ms. Kelly thinks Mr . Obama shows compassion toward the poor. ''It's not like one man can find jobs for all these people,'' she said, surveying the crowd around her. ''But there's a lot the president can do.''

On the other hand, Anthony Gonzales, a 20-yea r-old from Denver who just found a job as a custodian after a long search, doubt s Mr. Obama ''has a lever to make things better or really bad.''

Still, Mr. Gonzales finds Mr. Obama more appealing on social issues like same-sex marriage . ''I like him,'' Mr. Gonzales said.

But, at the moment, he cannot help el ect Mr. Obama, no matter how much he likes him.

Mr. Gonzales has never reg istered to vote.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/politics/strug gling-young-adults-pose-challenge-for-campaigns.html


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Shaun Clancy, 29, could not affo rd to stay in college and is jobless in DuBois, Pa. Yasmin Kenny, 28, who works in Tampa, Fla., after leaving college for money reasons, has no regular place to stay. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF SWENSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
BRIAN BLANCO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A13)
Matt Ely, 25, works two restaurant jobs in Green Bay, Wi s., but lives ''paycheck to paycheck.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY DARREN HAUCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A14)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



849 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 20, 2012 Thursday


Clinton to Appear on 'Face the Nation'


BYLINE: EMMARIE HUETTEMAN


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 300 words



HIGHLIGHT: The interview coincides with the annual meeting of President Bill Clinton's philanthropic organization, the Clinton Global Initiative.


President Bill Clinton plans to return to the Sunday talk-show circuit with an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The interview coincides with the annual meeting of Mr. Clinton's philanthropic organization, the Clinton Global Initiative, which convenes in New York on Sunday. President Obama and Mitt Romney both plan to speak at the three-day conference.

Since he delivered a well-received speech at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, Mr. Clinton has been a featured player on the campaign trail, scheduling visits to key swing states and appearing in campaign ads.

Mr. Clinton's appearance on CBS comes at the height of his popularity. Two-thirds of registered voters have a favorable view of the former president, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll - meaning he is more popular now than he has been at any time since he was a presidential candidate 20 years ago.

Mr. Clinton's appearance comes after a rough week for Mr. Romney. Hoping to sharpen the Republican message after the candidate's widely criticized response to the embassy attacks in the Middle East and a damaging Politico report of discord within the campaign, the Romney team instead found itself in damage-control mode, defending comments captured in a leaked video about Americans who feel they are "entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

It has been a year since Mr. Clinton appeared on any of the Sunday shows; he went on "Face the Nation," NBC's "Meet the Press" and ABC's "This Week" ahead of the Clinton Global Initiative's meeting last September.



LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



850 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 20, 2012 Thursday


Netanyahu Appears in Conservative Group's Ad


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 226 words



HIGHLIGHT: A new ad that will run in areas of Florida with large Jewish populations attempts to stoke anxiety over American policies in the region, using a news clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning of the risks of a nuclear Iran.


Israel and Middle East policy have a tendency of surfacing in presidential politics in rather combustible ways. And a new advertisement that will run in areas of Florida with large Jewish populations attempts to stoke anxiety over American policies in the region, using a news clip of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warning of the risks of a nuclear Iran.

"The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear arms," Mr. Netanyahu is shown saying.

For dramatic effect, a soundtrack fit for an episodic drama like "Homeland" plays as the prime minister continues. "The world tells Israel, 'Wait. There's still time.' And I say wait for what? Wait until when?"
Then an unseen announcer concludes: "The world needs American strength, not apologies."

That line is a not-so-veiled swipe at President Obama. Mitt Romney and other Republicans have criticized his foreign policy as apologetic, toward volatile countries like Iran.

The group that produced the ad, Secure America Now, is run by two longtime Republican strategists, Nelson Warfield ? and John ?McLaughlin, and ?Pat Caddell, a former aide to Jimmy Carter who is now a Fox News contributor. They have reserved $500,000 of airtime in Fort Myers, West Palm Beach and Miami.

A senior Israeli official said the government was not consulted on the ad and did not approve it.


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



851 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 20, 2012 Thursday


TimesCast Politics: The Romney Campaign Tries to Reboot


BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 91 words



HIGHLIGHT: A rough few weeks for Romney. | Voices of Wisconsin voters. | Romney's smaller than expected bank account. | The White House mixes politics and policy.


Jim Wilson/The New York Times

0:53  Romney Reboots

Jeff Zeleny looks back at a rough few weeks for the Romney campaign.

7:05  Voices in Wisconsin

Jeff Zeleny checks in with voters in Wisconsin.

10:16  Romney Campaign's Finances

Jeremy W. Peters reports on the Romney campaign's finances and ad buys.

13:15  Politics and Policy

Peter Baker discusses the Obama campaign's mixing of politics and policy.

18:43  Previewing the Massachusetts Senate Debate

Katharine Q. Seelye looks ahead to Thursday night's debate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown.


LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



852 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 20, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION


Conversation starters


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A


LENGTH: 390 words


Learning blind

While it is clear that a college degree is a great value, what is not at all clear is the value of particular degrees from particular colleges. Prospective students are making critical career and life decisions when they choose a college and a program. But students are making these decisions with shockingly little information about how likely it is they'll graduate from a particular school, how much debt they'll have when they graduate, what their future earnings are likely to be and what the likelihood is that they'll make enough money to pay down their debts after they graduate.

How can it be that we lack the data when we are flooded with college rankings and reports? This is a bit shocking considering we live in a data driven world. Companies collect it as a way to decide whom to advertise their products to. The government collects Census data to better allocate resources. Twitter users even have access to analytics to see how many times their tweets have been re-tweeted and how widely they spread. Yet students don't have access to data that could help them make decisions.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,

and Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Reimagining Social Security

While Medicare, the program primarily focused on providing health care for retirees, has become a bigger than usual presence in the back and forth between the Romney and Obama camps in the presidential campaign, a more fundamental issue for American retirement isn't getting the attention it deserves: How are we going to put roofs over our heads?

According to a recent report from Boston College's Center for Retirement Research, Americans are not saving enough to retire. The move away from traditional "defined benefit" plans to "defined contribution" 401(k)-style plans has not succeeded. With median retirement account balances of only $120,000 for those close to retirement, many people will find it difficult to maintain anything resembling their current lifestyles -- even with Social Security and Medicare. Instead of considering some exciting new program to try to encourage workers into saving more, another Rube Goldberg incentive contraption designed to nudge individual behavior in the right direction, we should consider the heresy of increasing the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.

Duncan Black,

EschatonBlog.com


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



853 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 20, 2012 Thursday 9:45 PM EST


Harry Reid: Scott Brown 'doesn't want to debate';
The Senate majority leader suggests the Bay State Republican was trying to look for a way out of his debate against Elizabeth Warren.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 693 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Pro-Romney super PAC spent heavily in August

Can Mitt Romney's ground game close the gap in Virginia?

Can Tommy Thompson rebound in Wisconsin?

The enthusiasm gap (or not) - in 2 charts

GOP gives up on trying to push Akin out

Lindsey Graham, 2014 target?

A GOP Senate majority? Just wait for 2014

Is the 2012 election tilting toward Democrats?

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* President Obama said at a Univision forum Thursday that, "you can't change Washington from the inside," a remark Mitt Romney promptly pounced on during his stump speech. "I've learned some lessons," Obama said at the forum. "Most important is you can't change Washington from inside, only from the outside. That's how some of our biggest accomplishments like health care got done - mobilizing the American people." Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said: "What the President said today is no different than what he has been saying for many years - that change comes from outside Washington, not inside. When Americans came together and stood up to special interests, we reformed health care, cut taxes for the middle class and put in new rules for Wall Street. And, that's why we have elections."

* Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine said at a debate that he would be open to a minimum income tax for every American. He offered his comment in response to a question about Romney's widely publicized "47 percent" remark at a spring fundraiser. "I would be open to a proposal that has some minimum tax level for everyone, but I do insist many of the 47 percent that governor Romney was going after pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than he does," Kaine said at the debate with former senator George Allen (R). Kaine said after the debate he was not proposing a minimum income tax.

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was looking for an excuse to skip a Thursday night debate with Elizabeth Warren (D). Tussling over an amendment offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the Senate delayed a vote on a short-term spending bill that is expected to pass. Brown had suggested he might miss the debate if Democrats scheduled votes conflicting with its start time. "I've been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who had a debate tonight doesn't want to debate. Well, he can't use the Senate as an excuse. There will be no more votes today," Reid said.

* A new CNN/ORC International poll of likely voters in Nevada shows Obama running about even with Romney, with the president at 49 percent and Romney at 46 percent.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) will head up the Financial Services Roundtable, a Wall Street lobbying group. He's stepping down as Romney's campaign co-chair in order to accept the position.

* The Missouri governor's race is heating up, with businessman Dave Spence (R) hitting Gov. Jay Nixon (D) with a TV ad tying him to Obama. Nixon struck back with an ad of his own attacking Spence for sitting on the board of a bank that took TARP money that hasn't been paid back.

* Bill Clinton will appear on CBS's "Face The Nation" this Sunday.

* A former staffer on Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) presidential campaign filed a police report accusing Bachmann's former Iowa campaign chair of stealing a private email list. She accused Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson, who switched over to Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) presidential campaign just before the caucuses in January. The former staffer, Barb Heki, had previously filed a civil suit against the Bachmann campaign, arguing she was improperly blamed for the use of the email list.

THE FIX MIX:

First encounters of a Google kind.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



854 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 20, 2012 Thursday 8:52 PM EST


Pro-Romney super PAC spent heavily in August;
Restore Our Future spent three times as much as it raised and has just $6.3 million left in the bank.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 172 words


The top super PAC devoted to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign spent three times as much as it raised in August, as the GOP nominee's campaign faced a cash shortfall.

A new filing from the super PAC, Restore Our Future, shows it spent $21.2 million in August - far more than the $7 million it raised - and had just $6.3 million left at the end of the month.

It's by far the super PAC's most involved fundraising month. And it came as Romney struggled to compete on the airwaves with President Obama's reelection campaign.

It was reported earlier this week that, because of a lack of primary funds, Romney had to take out a $20 million loan. In the meantime, it appears Restore Our Future and other Republican-aligned outside groups teamed up to keep the GOP side competitive in the ad wars.

Candidates are not allowed to use money raised for the general election until they officially accept their party's nomination.

August financial reports are due by midnight Thursday. The Romney and Obama campaigns have yet to file their reports.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



855 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 20, 2012 Thursday 8:20 PM EST


Can Tommy Thompson rebound in Wisconsin?;
U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) has seized the momentum away from the former frontrunner. Can the well-known former governor get it back?


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 761 words


If the 2012 election cycle has felt like a roller coaster ride for anyone, it's former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R). Since declaring his Senate candidacy, Thompson has been a top target of conservative groups, a Senate frontrunner, and now, an apparent underdog.

Does Thompson have another surge in him? His supporters aren't panicking yet, because it's very possible he does.

When Thompson won a brutal four-way primary in August, it was hardly in a dominating fashion. But national Republican strategists got the candidate they wanted: A four-term governor with nearly universal name ID and a moderate record.

Polling conducted just after Thompson's primary win showed why the GOP had something to celebrate. He led opponent Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) by six points and nine points in two live-caller surveys.

Fast forward to this week, and things don't look so great for Thompson anymore. Suddenly, Thompson finds himself tied and losing by nine points in the two polls that previously showed him leading.

And his trajectory has resonated beyond Wisconsin. With just days left for Rep. Todd Akin (R) to remove himself from the ballot in Missouri (something that is looking like an unlikely proposition), Republican prospects there are looking dimmer. If Akin remains on the ballot, it will greatly reduce the GOP odds of picking up a seat that once looked very promising. That would make a Wisconsin pickup all the more crucial for the GOP.

Back in Wisconsin, Democrats have been consistently hitting Thompson over his work on the lobbying circuit after he left office. Both Baldwin's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have been pressing the argument, which party strategists believe has helped propel Baldwin into the lead.

"Four polls released this week show that we are moving in the right direction as the choice for Wisconsin voters has been made clear," Baldwin spokesman John Kraus said in a statement.

Bruised by an expensive primary campaign, Thompson's campaign coffers were badly depleted by the end. As he put it, his campaign was "broke." So he attempted to regroup, placing a renewed focus on fundraising, something which has been a weak point for him this cycle. He was off the airwaves for weeks, leaving a vacuum that Baldwin smartly filled with a message that dinged the Republican's image.

Republican strategists acknowledge the race has tightened, but maintain it is still within Thompson's reach. They remain encouraged for several reasons.

Thompson has signed on Keith Gilkes, a former campaign manager and chief of staff to  Gov. Scott Walker (R), the Republican standard-bearer in the state during the last two years. Thompson also got a hand Thursday from the Chamber of Commerce, which launched a new ad hitting Baldwin over her support for President Obama's health care law. And Thompson is back on the air with an ad echoing the health care attack against Baldwin.

"[Thompson] is the most successful politician in Wisconsin history," said Bill McCoshen, a former chief of staff to the Republican nominee and state secretary of commerce during his tenure as governor. "He got out of the gate slow because of a brutal primary where he was outspent 6-1. He has the resources he needs to draw a clear contrast with Tammy Baldwin."

Republicans hope to cast Baldwin as too liberal for the state and are hoping that competition at the top of the ticket could help Thompson. Polls (save for a Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday showing Obama leading Mitt Romney by 14 points) have shown a competitive presidential race in the Badger State, which the Republican nominee has not carried since 1984.

If Obama runs ahead of Romney by more than a few points in Wisconsin, that's certainly good news for Baldwin. Thompson can win some crossover voters, but ultimately, the better the president does, the better it is for the congresswoman.

Baldwin, who faced no primary challenge, put herself a strong position to compete in the fall, raising heaps of cash working to build enthusiasm among Democrats. She has indisputably seized the high ground in recent weeks and continued on offense Thursday with a new ad casting Thompson as unfriendly to middle class voters.

As the race approaches its final stretch, Democrats' messaging will really be put to the test. If their argument that Thompson is beholden to Washington is enough to cancel out positive feelings voters have from his tenure as governor, they could win. If Thompson's legacy in the state is what matters more, then Republicans could well walk away with a victory.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



856 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 20, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Behind the big-dollar fundraisers


BYLINE: Ann Gerhart;Jason Horowitz


SECTION: Style; Pg. C01


LENGTH: 1111 words


It doesn't look all that swanky, the chamber of secrets in the Boca Raton mansion where Mitt Romney spilled about what wasn't his job - to worry about the 47 percent of people who were, he said, victims and dependents.

The Florida sun is still coming in the window, turning the walls of a small room an even richer yellow. The few people visible in the leaked video of the May 17 private fundraiser - a balding man in a gray suit, a woman with an aggressively blond mane - are seated at a table on gold, hardback chairs that are standard mid-range issue from any nice party rental company: perfectly fine, not shabby but not fancy, either.

There is no 18-foot champagne tower, covered up, as at the Tuesday evening fundraiser for President Obama at the 40/40 Club in Manhattan, although the uncorking of wine bottles can be heard. A hundred people paid $40,000 apiece to hang with Obama and fundraiser hosts Beyonce and Jay-Z. A much smaller number paid $50,000 per person to meet in Boca Raton with Romney and hear him make a joke about how he could beat Obama more easily if his grandparents had been Mexican. They laughed heartily.

Those price tags are not much less than what the average American family of four earns in a year. Yes, the donors are very rich people. Why is this what they choose to do with their money? What do they want?

Proximity to power, face time with the candidate, a chance to air their views, strut a little before the other people in the room and to brag plenty once they've left, say people who have hosted intimate fundraisers and raised piles of money for both Republicans and Democrats.

Romney knows exactly, and he gives it to them right up front.

"Because the table is small enough and the room is intimate enough, I'd like to spend our time responding to questions you have, listening to advice you might have," Romney says on the video, released Monday by Mother Jones magazine.

Listening to advice you might have.

Flattery, attentiveness, pandering. A politician has to play to many crowds - the New Hampshire town hall, the VFW guys, the soccer moms. His or her rich donors are just one more audience.

Because the high-dollar, low-head-count fundraiser is closed to the press and held in a private home, it is invisible to the people who will ultimately decide the contest - that would be millions of voters. The unmistakable impression is that rich people get the real deal, the truth that the candidate won't tell the public.

Fundraisers are closed to the press and off-the-record not to protect the candidate from too-frank assessments. The candidate, after all, is presumed to be skilled enough at audience calibration to deliver to his crowd without damaging his campaign. These events are closed to protect the donors, who do not wish to blurt out their deepest fears and aspirations for public consumption, political fundraisers say.

"It's done not so much for the candidate as much as it is for the guests. You want them to feel relaxed and be able to ask questions without feeling they are on the record," said Robert Zimmerman, a member of several national finance committees for Democratic presidential campaigns. "Because a candidate is always on the record, especially for president."

Added another person who has worked for three Democratic presidential candidates and requested anonymity to talk frankly about the details of such events: "By the time [candidates] get to this level, they're pros. They know how to give the appearance of a frank back-and-forth with the room without going off message.

"If a guy from the garment business wants to ask about trade and how he's going to be able to get his silk, the candidate knows how to answer that" without deviating from economic policy messages he's already delivered on the stump.

Sure, they screw up. In 2008, at a fundraiser in Marin County, Calif., Obama revealed his frustration over not consolidating white, working-class support and attributed it to voters who "cling to their guns and religion." Bill Clinton, campaigning for reelection in 1995, told a room of donors bluntly that he probably had raised their taxes too much. George W. Bush joked to some donors, "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base," and the Democratic National Committee made an ad of it.

Romney's problem, suggested two other Democratic fundraisers, is that his remarks struck such a nerve because the audience seemed exactly like Romney's people.

"If they hadn't paid $50,000 and he wasn't running for president, he'd be in the room anyway," said one bundler for President Obama. "Often, donors want a more complicated relational moment than a materially transactional moment," said Georgette Mosbacher, a doyenne of donor maintenance. "It's a social structure as much as it is anything else," she said. "It's a club."

Those who throw fundraisers have to hit a target take, which means they have to put the touch on a couple of dozen people they know and ask for big checks. They have to foot the bill for the party, which usually features food that is good enough that no one complains but not so good that a donor may wonder why such money didn't go directly into the coffers of the political committee.

For the hard work, such a host or hostess may get a mention in a press pool report, with its eyes-pressed-to-the-window quality:

"After an uneventful drive down lovely shaded lanes, pool arrived at 5 PM at the first fundraiser," began a pool report for a Romney fundraiser in Locust Valley, N.Y., on Sept 13. "The estate has a manicured lawn" - manicured lawns make frequent cameos in pool reports - "divided by a gravel drive, a large home, and several outbuildings, including a greenhouse and an 'automobile stable,' where your pool is now holding. An automobile stable, it turns out, is just a fancy garage. This one contains a Thunderbird convertible and a couple of scooters."

If the fundraisers bring enough donors to these parties, they become "bundlers" - and then maybe ambassadors to nice countries such as Barbados (Mary Ourisman) and Portugal (Elizabeth Bagley).

But that comes much, much later, if and when the candidate gets to move into the White House. For now, the Romney campaign has offered to its two dozen top donors an invitation to lunch at the Regency in New York on Monday with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

And while Romney's next fundraiser in Florida's Palm Beach County, on Thursday, should be zipped up firmly after the uproar over the last one, his message is likely to be just as plainly stated as in the room in Boca Raton four months ago:

"Frankly what I need you to do is raise millions of dollars."

gerharta@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



857 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 20, 2012 Thursday 8:12 PM EST


Kaine takes first lead over Allen


BYLINE: Ben Pershing;Scott Clement


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1314 words


Timothy M. Kaine has jumped ahead of George Allen for the first time in their U.S. Senate race, according to a new Washington Post poll in Virginia, changing the complexion of a nationally watched contest that could help determine which party will control the chamber.

Kaine (D) leads fellow former governor Allen (R) among likely voters by 51 percent to 43 percent, and Kaine is ahead among all registered voters by an identical margin in the hard-fought contest to succeed the retiring James Webb (D).

The survey's results mark a significant shift: The past two Post polls about the race, taken in May 2011 and May 2012, showed a tie among registered voters, and several more recent surveys have shown a deadlock.

A Quinnipiac University-CBS News-New York Times poll released Wednesday also has Kaine in the lead.

With seven weeks until Election Day, Kaine appears to have a clear edge, helped by a growing lead among women and a significant uptick in support among seniors and residents of the area surrounding Richmond, where he served as mayor. Although Kaine previously lagged behind President Obama, his support now tracks closely with the top of the ticket: Obama leads his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in Virginia in the Post poll by the same eight-percentage-point spread among likely voters.

Virginia by no means has the only tightly contested race in the country. Democrats are fighting to keep their Senate majority by holding seats in Montana, Missouri and Wisconsin, while Republicans are battling to keep control of Indiana, Maine and Massachusetts, among others.

But no state is considered more integral to winning the Senate and the White House than Virginia, making the new poll's shift toward Kaine and reinforcement of Obama's lead especially welcome signs for Democrats. And no other state features such a high-powered matchup: Allen and Kaine are proven fundraisers with high name recognition. The race is Allen's fourth statewide campaign and Kaine's third.

The survey results come as the contest enters a decisive phase. Kaine and Allen are set to debate Thursday in McLean, with two more face-offs scheduled in October. Both candidates have multimillion-dollar ad campaigns inundating the airwaves - Kaine's team introduced two new spots Wednesday portraying him as a bipartisan dealmaker - and outside money is pouring into Virginia.

Although Kaine's campaign has consistently outraised Allen's, outside conservative groups such as Crossroads GPS have pumped millions of dollars into negative ads against the Democrat. Yet voters' opinions of Kaine have improved significantly since the previous Post poll.

Fifty-four percent of registered voters now have a favorable impression of the Democrat, while 34 percent view him unfavorably. In May, the score was 41 percent to 41 percent. Allen has a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent, similar to the 47 percent to 31 percent he recorded in May. For both men, the percentage of voters expressing no opinion is dwindling quickly.

In Northern Virginia, Kaine has a 13-point lead among registered voters and a 22-point lead in the close-in D.C. suburbs. Allen has a 14-point advantage in central and western Virginia.

But Kaine also is ahead in the Tidewater region, which includes Hampton Roads, and has opened up a 17-point edge in the area that includes Richmond and points east of the city. He trailed there by double digits in May.

Ronald N. Kroll, 71, a retired doctor from Bruington, said he prefers Kaine because of his record.

"We lived in Richmond at that time [Kaine was] mayor, and he did a very good job in very difficult circumstances," Kroll said, adding that the Democrat was also governor during "tough times financially, and he stuck by the same decisions he did as mayor."

Susan DiGiovanni, 54, of Midlothian also fondly remembered Kaine's mayoral days.

"I find him to be a very honest and trustworthy person," she said. "I believe he is somebody that would fight for Virginia. George Allen, I think, is more for big business and less representative of what I would like to see happen for the country."

Kaine has a growing advantage among women, who prefer him by 14 points - seven points higher than in May. That trend comes even though Allen spent several weeks this summer airing television ads aimed at improving his standing among women. Kaine has battled to a tie among men, a group that tilted in Allen's direction in the previous two polls.

Seniors also appear to be gravitating toward Kaine. The two men are essentially tied among voters 65 and older, whereas Allen led by 2 to 1 in May. Democrats have sought to link Allen to the Medicare reform proposals advanced by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The Post poll asked Virginians whether they preferred to have Medicare continue as a government-run program or become one in which the government gives seniors a fixed amount of money to buy private insurance or Medicare - similar to Ryan's plan. Fifty-six percent of registered voters said they wanted to keep the program the same, while 35 percent endorsed the reform proposal.

DiGiovanni, a doctor and assistant dean of medical education at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the fight over the federal health-care law factored into her decision.

"I believe that although Obamacare is not perfect, it certainly goes much further than any other president has gone to try to guarantee health care for our citizens," she said. "I feel like Allen would be with the Republican camp in repealing that and going backward."

Few Virginians called health care the most important issue in the Senate race. Thirty-nine percent of voters cited the economy or jobs as paramount, and no other single topic exceeded 5 percent.

Virginia voters are more unsettled in their choice for senator than they are for president. Twenty-eight percent of registered voters are undecided or are open to switching their selection, compared with the 19 percent who are up for grabs in the presidential contest. Persuadable voters divide about evenly between Allen and Kaine in the poll, but few have strong impressions of either candidate, leaving plenty of room for debates and nonstop TV ads to fill the gaps.

Doug Lathrop, 41, of Arlington County, a Republican and lobbyist for a life insurance company, is one of many who have not made up their minds in the Senate race.

"I'm pretty sure I would vote for George Allen, but I wouldn't say categorically I'm leaving out the chance I'd vote for Tim Kaine," he said.

The fact that both men served as governor, Lathrop added, "causes me to leave the door open. I don't think the state of Virginia did terribly bad under Governor Kaine, so that's why I'd give him a look. I think they're both competent public officials. I don't think either one has separated himself with the argument that they'd be a better public servant than the other guy."

Beth B. Lipphardt, a disabled Suffolk resident, said she will vote for Allen as "the lesser of two evils."

"I have likes and dislikes of both of them," she said, explaining that although Kaine "was a very good governor," she dislikes that he served as Democratic National Committee chairman.

Republicans have sought to use Kaine's DNC service to link him to Obama's more controversial policies. Equal shares of respondents cited Kaine's work for the DNC as a reason to support or oppose him.

The poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 12-16 among a random sample of 1,104 Virginia adults, including 934 registered voters and 847 likely voters. Interviews were conducted on conventional and cellular telephones, and carried out in English and Spanish. The margin of error for registered and likely voter samples is plus or minus four percentage points.

ben.pershing@wpost.com

clements@washpost.com

Jon Cohen, Peyton M. Craighill, Errin Haines and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



858 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 20, 2012 Thursday 5:03 PM EST


Mitt Romney's new strategy: Less money, more travel;
In the wake of some campaign stumbles, Mitt Romney has a plan to get his campaign back on track -- less fundraising and more campaigning.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 279 words


In the wake of some campaign stumbles, Mitt Romney has a plan to get his campaign back on track - less fundraising and more swing state campaigning. 

Romney will maintain "a very intense schedule" in coming days, ABC News reports. He's ramping up both his speaking schedule and his television ad buys. Despite his huge fundraising hauls, Romney has spent far less than Obama on ads in some key swing states.  

There will be more joint appearances with running mate Paul Ryan, Politico adds, and Romney will focus more in speeches on how his plans help the middle class.

The new commitment to the road starts with a three-day bus tour of Ohio, starting next Monday. Ryan and Romney will hit different parts of the state.

On Monday, in the wake of polls showing Romney lagging behind President Obama, campaign adviser Ed Gillepsie announced that the GOP nominee would focus more on policy specifics.

Romney adviser Kevin Madden told reporters Wednesday that it was not a campaign reset. "This has been a regular part of our schedule, going to battleground states, and talking with the voters about the issues that matter,"  he said. "I think that as you have voters really beginning to, are really beginning to tune in to the campaign, we're making sure that we've got our advertising in states, that we've got grassroots activity going on."

But  some Republicans have criticized Romney for spending so much time raising cash. 

"Romney doesn't seem to be out there campaigning enough," wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. "I think what Romney needs to do is get into Virginia and run for sheriff," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters. "This is not rocket science." 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



859 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 20, 2012 Thursday 3:46 PM EST


Is the 2012 election tilting toward Democrats?;
A multitude of polls in key states -- both at the presidential level and the Senate level -- show Democrats' fortunes improving.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 910 words


Either we're at a turning point in the 2012 election, or a lot of pollsters are getting it wrong.

The question for the past week-plus has been whether President Obama's convention bounce and a series of stumbles for Mitt Romney have recast the 2012 race.

Some national polls say yes, and a few say no. But more and more, the data at the state level point to some real movement in Democrats' favor. At least for now.

As we wrote Tuesday, Gallup polling shows that the bump Obama got from the Democratic convention two weeks ago has subsided. And another new poll, released Wednesday by the Associated Press and pollster GfK, shows basically the same picture, with 47 percent of likely voters supporting Obama and 46 percent backing Romney - a tie ballgame nationally.

But almost every state-specific poll in the last few days has shown progress for Democrats - both at the presidential level and in the very important contest for the Senate - with some showing unprecedented leads for the blue side in the the most important states.

Swing-state polls from CBS News, the New York Times and Quinnipiac University released Wednesday morning in three key states - Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin - showed Obama either gaining since last month or, in the case of Virginia, holding his lead.

And Fox News polls released Wednesday evening showed Obama with a solid lead in the three biggest swing states; he's up by seven points each in Ohio and Virginia and five points in Florida. The results confirm polls from NBC News and Marist College in the same three states last week.

A Washington Post poll released Tuesday confirms the movement in Virginia, with Obama up by an unprecedented eight points. And a Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday supports the idea that the race in Wisconsin has shifted, with Obama leading by an astounding 14 points.

Even if some of these margins seem a little big, just consider that even the best polls for Romney haven't shown him with that kind of lead in these states - or really anything close to it. In fact, Nate Silver points out that, of the 16 live-interview swing state polls conducted in the last two weeks, Obama is leading in all of them except Colorado by at least four points.

Prior to this week, it was rare that polls showed Obama leading by five points or more in any swing state; in those 16 states, he leads by an average of 5.8 points.

And just as much as the presidential race, the battle for the Senate appears to be moving toward Democrats.

As The Fix's Sean Sullivan reported Wednesday, multiple polls in top Senate races in Massachusetts, Virginia and Wisconsin in recent days show the Democratic candidates in those states gaining big - larger shifts than any we've seen so far this cycle. If Democrats can win even two of those states, it will put a sizeable dent in the GOP's chances of gaining the three or four seats they need to take control of the Senate - an outcome that was very attainable for Republicans at the start of the cycle.

The question from here is whether these swing-state and Senate polls reflect a momentary bounce and spike in enthusiasm among Democrats or whether they show a more lasting shift in the electoral landscape. Only time will tell.

What's clear to this point, though, is that the movement has been significant in the states that matter most.

Chamber launches ads in four states: The Chamber of Commerce is going up with new ads in four states - including a couple where other Republican groups aren't running ads.

The new ads will run in Hawaii, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin. The first two states are blue states where national Republicans either haven't run ads (Hawaii) or have pulled their advertising (New Mexico).

Scott Reed, a media consultant working with the Chamber on the ads, said the name of the game is expanding the field of play.

"Our strategy all year has been to try to grow the map and get more Senate races to be competitive," Reed said. "These are markets that where we think we can move some voters using brand of the Chamber."

The ads (which can be seen here) focus on former Virginia governor Tim Kaine's (D) energy record, former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle's (R) business record (a positive spot), Rep. Martin Heinrich's (D-N.M.) ties to Washington and Rep. Tammy Baldwin's (D-Wis.) vote for Obamacare and its Medicare cuts.

The Chamber declined to say how much it was spending in each state, but it noted that the buy in Virginia, for example, is big and will cover all markets in the state.

Fixbits:

A new Romney ad in Florida features Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), who disagreed with Romney's "47 percent" comment, clarifies that he still supports him for president.

In contrast to a series of polls showing him losing ground, a new UMass/Boston Herald poll shows Brown leading by four.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) says his opponent, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), is the "most unethical, corrupt person I've ever met."

A Democratic super PAC's ad quotes former senator George Allen (R-Va.) out of context.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Texas to use its interim maps for the 2012 election.

Must-reads:

"Mitt Romney shifts focus to Obama's '98 comments on 'redistribution'" - Ed O'Keefe and Rosalind S. Helderman, Washington Post

"To claim Virginia, Obama's hopes rest on women" - Karen Tumulty and Scott Clement, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



860 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 20, 2012 Thursday 2:44 PM EST


More flawed graphs in a Romney campaign ad;
A Romney campaign ad uses bar graphs to illustrate growth in national debt and declining family incomes under President Obama. We checked them for accuracy.


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 914 words


"This was household income when President Obama took office. This was the national debt. Under Obama, families have lost over $4,000 a year in income, and the national debt is now $16 trillion and growing. Barack Obama: More spending, more debt - failing American families."

- Narration from Mitt Romney campaign ad

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has turned his attention back to spending and the economy after attacking President Obama last week on foreign policy and trade relations with China. This ad reminds voters that the national debt has grown while incomes have largely fallen, suggesting that the outlook for future generations is bleak under the current administration.

In a previous column, we examined an ad that used similar brick-layer bar graphs to make a point that the U.S. is losing ground to China on manufacturing. The illustrations in that video were badly inaccurate, exaggerating the severity of the situation.

Let's see whether the graphs in this ad are more true to the facts.

The Facts

The last available data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that median household income was $50,054 in 2011 - the 2012 numbers won't be available until next year. That's compared to an inflation-adjusted $52,546 in 2008, so the difference during Obama's tenure is $2,492, which seems to disprove Romney's claim of a $4,000 drop.

So where does the GOP candidate get his numbers?

The Romney campaign pointed us to a set of reports from the Sentier Research group, which started its own "household income index" in 2011. The organization tracks median income on a monthly rather than annual basis, drawing from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey to come up with its numbers.

The creators of the Sentier index, Gordon Green and John Coder, are former department heads for the Census Bureau.

Sentier's latest report showed a U.S. median household income of $50,881 in July 2012, compared to about $55,300 when Obama entered the White House. That's a difference of more than $4,000, which puts Romney on safe ground.

Here's the index:

Readers will notice that the median household income declined after both of the last two recessions. So it's not unusual for the level to remain relatively low after an economic downturn has ended.

After the 2001 recession, the median income showed a general drop until late 2005, and it never topped its pre-downturn level until 2007.

Granted, the median income during Obama's tenure has fallen more drastically. But the president also inherited a more severe recession than the one that occurred in 2001.

Why does the median income decline after a recession is over? Coder pointed out that the falling numbers correlate with higher-than-usual unemployment and underemployment levels, which persisted after both economic downturns had ended.

Now that we know it's nothing new for the median income to fall after a recession, let's test Romney's bar graphs using the Sentier data. The ad uses brick layers to represent median household income, so we'll start by determining how much each layer represents.

The first bar graph shows 14 layers for a median income of $55,300 in January 2009. That means each layer equals $3,950.

The graph shrinks down to eight brick layers for July 2012, which means the median fell to $31,600. But the true median income at that point was $50,881, according to Sentier.

The bottom line here is that Romney's illustration is out of proportion, and it sells U.S. workers short on their earnings.

Granted, the ad mentions a number for how much the median income has dropped under the current president: $4,000. But the bar graph exaggerates the impact of this drop, as though a true representation wouldn't look painful enough.

In terms of national debt, the ad is correct that the level has jumped from $10.6 trillion to more than $16 trillion since Obama took office. But the bar graph once again doesn't match with the real numbers.

If you convert the brick layers to dollars, the illustration suggests that the current debt is $21 trillion - more than double the level when Obama took office. That's off the mark by more than 30 percent. An accurate graphic would end with 12 brick layers instead of 16.

Again, we have to give the Romney campaign some credit for stating outright the true levels of debt, but the out-of-proportion bar graph exaggerates how much change has occurred.

The Pinocchio Test

Data from the Sentier Research group supports Romney's claim about a $4,000 drop in the median household income, but the bar graph he used to represent this decline doesn't match the true numbers. Moreover, as noted above, a decline in household income is not that unusual after a recession.

The same goes for the reference to debt. The ad states correct numbers, but its bar graph is badly out of proportion.

Visual aids help viewers contextualize numbers, so the problem with Romney's illustrations is that they exaggerate the changes that have taken place, giving viewers a distorted impression of what has happened during the Obama administration.

Romney earns two Pinocchios for his ad about rising debt and falling incomes.

Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



861 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition


Behind the big-dollar fundraisers


BYLINE: Ann Gerhart;Jason Horowitz


SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01


LENGTH: 1109 words


It doesn't look all that swanky, the chamber of secrets in the Boca Raton mansion where Mitt Romney spilled about what wasn't his job - to worry about the 47 percent of people who were, he said, victims and dependents.

The Florida sun is still coming in the window, turning the walls of a small room an even richer yellow. The few people visible in the leaked video of the May 17 private fundraiser - a balding man in a gray suit, a woman with an aggressively blond mane - are seated at a table on gold, hardback chairs that are standard mid-range issue from any nice party rental company: perfectly fine, not shabby but not fancy, either.

There is no 18-foot champagne tower, covered up, as at the Tuesday evening fundraiser for President Obama at the 40/40 Club in Manhattan, although the uncorking of wine bottles can be heard. A hundred people paid $40,000 apiece to hang with Obama and fundraiser hosts Beyonce and Jay-Z. A much smaller number paid $50,000 per person to meet in Boca Raton with Romney and hear him make a joke about how he could beat Obama more easily if his grandparents had been Mexican. They laughed heartily.

Those price tags are not much less than what the average American family of four earns in a year. Yes, the donors are very rich people. Why is this what they choose to do with their money? What do they want?

Proximity to power, face time with the candidate, a chance to air their views, strut a little before the other people in the room and to brag plenty once they've left, say people who have hosted intimate fundraisers and raised piles of money for both Republicans and Democrats.

Romney knows exactly, and he gives it to them right up front.

"Because the table is small enough and the room is intimate enough, I'd like to spend our time responding to questions you have, listening to advice you might have," Romney says on the video, released Monday by Mother Jones magazine.

Listening to advice you might have.

Flattery, attentiveness, pandering. A politician has to play to many crowds - the New Hampshire town hall, the VFW guys, the soccer moms. His or her rich donors are just one more audience.

Because the high-dollar, low-head-count fundraiser is closed to the press and held in a private home, it is invisible to the people who will ultimately decide the contest - that would be millions of voters. The unmistakable impression is that rich people get the real deal, the truth that the candidate won't tell the public.

Fundraisers are closed to the press and off-the-record not to protect the candidate from too-frank assessments. The candidate, after all, is presumed to be skilled enough at audience calibration to deliver to his crowd without damaging his campaign. These events are closed to protect the donors, who do not wish to blurt out their deepest fears and aspirations for public consumption, political fundraisers say.

"It's done not so much for the candidate as much as it is for the guests. You want them to feel relaxed and be able to ask questions without feeling they are on the record," said Robert Zimmerman, a member of several national finance committees for Democratic presidential campaigns. "Because a candidate is always on the record, especially for president."

Added another person who has worked for three Democratic presidential candidates and requested anonymity to talk frankly about the details of such events: "By the time [candidates] get to this level, they're pros. They know how to give the appearance of a frank back-and-forth with the room without going off message.

"If a guy from the garment business wants to ask about trade and how he's going to be able to get his silk, the candidate knows how to answer that" without deviating from economic policy messages he's already delivered on the stump.

Sure, they screw up. In 2008, at a fundraiser in Marin County, Calif., Obama revealed his frustration over not consolidating white, working-class support and attributed it to voters who "cling to their guns and religion." Bill Clinton, campaigning for reelection in 1995, told a room of donors bluntly that he probably had raised their taxes too much. George W. Bush joked to some donors, "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base," and the Democratic National Committee made an ad of it.

Romney's problem, suggested two other Democratic fundraisers, is that his remarks struck such a nerve because the audience seemed exactly like Romney's people.

"If they hadn't paid $50,000 and he wasn't running for president, he'd be in the room anyway," said one bundler for President Obama. "Often, donors want a more complicated relational moment than a materially transactional moment," said Georgette Mosbacher, a doyenne of donor maintenance. "It's a social structure as much as it is anything else," she said. "It's a club."

Those who throw fundraisers have to hit a target take, which means they have to put the touch on a couple of dozen people they know and ask for big checks. They have to foot the bill for the party, which usually features food that is good enough that no one complains but not so good that a donor may wonder why such money didn't go directly into the coffers of the political committee.

For the hard work, such a host or hostess may get a mention in a press pool report, with its eyes-pressed-to-the-window quality:

"After an uneventful drive down lovely shaded lanes, pool arrived at 5 PM at the first fundraiser," began a pool report for a Romney fundraiser in Locust Valley, N.Y., on Sept 13. "The estate has a manicured lawn" - manicured lawns make frequent cameos in pool reports - "divided by a gravel drive, a large home, and several outbuildings, including a greenhouse and an 'automobile stable,' where your pool is now holding. An automobile stable, it turns out, is just a fancy garage. This one contains a Thunderbird convertible and a couple of scooters."

If the fundraisers bring enough donors to these parties, they become "bundlers" - and then maybe ambassadors to nice countries such as Barbados (Mary Ourisman) and Portugal (Elizabeth Bagley).

But that comes much, much later, if and when the candidate gets to move into the White House. For now, the Romney campaign has offered to its two dozen top donors an invitation to lunch at the Regency in New York on Monday with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

And while Romney's next fundraiser in Florida's Palm Beach County, on Thursday, should be zipped up firmly after the uproar over the last one, his message is likely to be just as plainly stated as in the room in Boca Raton four months ago:

"Frankly what I need you to do is raise millions of dollars."

gerharta@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



862 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 20, 2012 Thursday
Met 2 Edition


Kaine takes first lead over Allen


BYLINE: Ben Pershing;Scott Clement


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1314 words


Timothy M. Kaine has jumped ahead of George Allen for the first time in their U.S. Senate race, according to a new Washington Post poll in Virginia, changing the complexion of a nationally watched contest that could help determine which party will control the chamber.

Kaine (D) leads fellow former governor Allen (R) among likely voters by 51 percent to 43 percent, and Kaine is ahead among all registered voters by an identical margin in the hard-fought contest to succeed the retiring James Webb (D).

The survey's results mark a significant shift: The past two Post polls about the race, taken in May 2011 and May 2012, showed a tie among registered voters, and several more recent surveys have shown a deadlock.

A Quinnipiac University-CBS News-New York Times poll released Wednesday also has Kaine in the lead.

With seven weeks until Election Day, Kaine appears to have a clear edge, helped by a growing lead among women and a significant uptick in support among seniors and residents of the area surrounding Richmond, where he served as mayor. Although Kaine previously lagged behind President Obama, his support now tracks closely with the top of the ticket: Obama leads his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in Virginia in the Post poll by the same eight-percentage-point spread among likely voters.

Virginia by no means has the only tightly contested race in the country. Democrats are fighting to keep their Senate majority by holding seats in Montana, Missouri and Wisconsin, while Republicans are battling to keep control of Indiana, Maine and Massachusetts, among others.

But no state is considered more integral to winning the Senate and the White House than Virginia, making the new poll's shift toward Kaine and reinforcement of Obama's lead especially welcome signs for Democrats. And no other state features such a high-powered matchup: Allen and Kaine are proven fundraisers with high name recognition. The race is Allen's fourth statewide campaign and Kaine's third.

The survey results come as the contest enters a decisive phase. Kaine and Allen are set to debate Thursday in McLean, with two more face-offs scheduled in October. Both candidates have multimillion-dollar ad campaigns inundating the airwaves - Kaine's team introduced two new spots Wednesday portraying him as a bipartisan dealmaker - and outside money is pouring into Virginia.

Although Kaine's campaign has consistently outraised Allen's, outside conservative groups such as Crossroads GPS have pumped millions of dollars into negative ads against the Democrat. Yet voters' opinions of Kaine have improved significantly since the previous Post poll.

Fifty-four percent of registered voters now have a favorable impression of the Democrat, while 34 percent view him unfavorably. In May, the score was 41 percent to 41 percent. Allen has a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent, similar to the 47 percent to 31 percent he recorded in May. For both men, the percentage of voters expressing no opinion is dwindling quickly.

In Northern Virginia, Kaine has a 13-point lead among registered voters and a 22-point lead in the close-in D.C. suburbs. Allen has a 14-point advantage in central and western Virginia.

But Kaine also is ahead in the Tidewater region, which includes Hampton Roads, and has opened up a 17-point edge in the area that includes Richmond and points east of the city. He trailed there by double digits in May.

Ronald N. Kroll, 71, a retired doctor from Bruington, said he prefers Kaine because of his record.

"We lived in Richmond at that time [Kaine was] mayor, and he did a very good job in very difficult circumstances," Kroll said, adding that the Democrat was also governor during "tough times financially, and he stuck by the same decisions he did as mayor."

Susan DiGiovanni, 54, of Midlothian also fondly remembered Kaine's mayoral days.

"I find him to be a very honest and trustworthy person," she said. "I believe he is somebody that would fight for Virginia. George Allen, I think, is more for big business and less representative of what I would like to see happen for the country."

Kaine has a growing advantage among women, who prefer him by 14 points - seven points higher than in May. That trend comes even though Allen spent several weeks this summer airing television ads aimed at improving his standing among women. Kaine has battled to a tie among men, a group that tilted in Allen's direction in the previous two polls.

Seniors also appear to be gravitating toward Kaine. The two men are essentially tied among voters 65 and older, whereas Allen led by 2 to 1 in May. Democrats have sought to link Allen to the Medicare reform proposals advanced by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the Republican vice presidential nominee.

The Post poll asked Virginians whether they preferred to have Medicare continue as a government-run program or become one in which the government gives seniors a fixed amount of money to buy private insurance or Medicare - similar to Ryan's plan. Fifty-six percent of registered voters said they wanted to keep the program the same, while 35 percent endorsed the reform proposal.

DiGiovanni, a doctor and assistant dean of medical education at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the fight over the federal health-care law factored into her decision.

"I believe that although Obamacare is not perfect, it certainly goes much further than any other president has gone to try to guarantee health care for our citizens," she said. "I feel like Allen would be with the Republican camp in repealing that and going backward."

Few Virginians called health care the most important issue in the Senate race. Thirty-nine percent of voters cited the economy or jobs as paramount, and no other single topic exceeded 5 percent.

Virginia voters are more unsettled in their choice for senator than they are for president. Twenty-eight percent of registered voters are undecided or are open to switching their selection, compared with the 19 percent who are up for grabs in the presidential contest. Persuadable voters divide about evenly between Allen and Kaine in the poll, but few have strong impressions of either candidate, leaving plenty of room for debates and nonstop TV ads to fill the gaps.

Doug Lathrop, 41, of Arlington County, a Republican and lobbyist for a life insurance company, is one of many who have not made up their minds in the Senate race.

"I'm pretty sure I would vote for George Allen, but I wouldn't say categorically I'm leaving out the chance I'd vote for Tim Kaine," he said.

The fact that both men served as governor, Lathrop added, "causes me to leave the door open. I don't think the state of Virginia did terribly bad under Governor Kaine, so that's why I'd give him a look. I think they're both competent public officials. I don't think either one has separated himself with the argument that they'd be a better public servant than the other guy."

Beth B. Lipphardt, a disabled Suffolk resident, said she will vote for Allen as "the lesser of two evils."

"I have likes and dislikes of both of them," she said, explaining that although Kaine "was a very good governor," she dislikes that he served as Democratic National Committee chairman.

Republicans have sought to use Kaine's DNC service to link him to Obama's more controversial policies. Equal shares of respondents cited Kaine's work for the DNC as a reason to support or oppose him.

The poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 12-16 among a random sample of 1,104 Virginia adults, including 934 registered voters and 847 likely voters. Interviews were conducted on conventional and cellular telephones, and carried out in English and Spanish. The margin of error for registered and likely voter samples is plus or minus four percentage points.

ben.pershing@wpost.com

clements@washpost.com

Jon Cohen, Peyton M. Craighill, Errin Haines and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



863 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 19, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Wisconsin Offers Window Into Challenges Confrontin g Romney


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and MARJORIE CONNELLY; Jeff Zeleny reported from R acine, and Marjorie Connelly from New York. Allison Kopicki, Marina Stefan and M egan Thee-Brenan contributed reporting from New York.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 1217 words


RACINE, Wis. -- To Mi tt Romney, the 10 electoral votes in Wisconsin may be more essential than extra, a critical backup plan if a first-tier battleground state falls out of reach.<P A>Seven weeks until the election, with Mr. Romney facing new questions about his ability to gain trust among voters experiencing economic hardships, his campaig n is increasingly pointing to Wisconsin as a place where a statewide Republican resurgence could rub off on Mr. Romney.

But President Obama has overtaken Mr. Romney on who would do a better job handling the economy, accordi ng to a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely Wiscons in voters. The poll also found that Mr. Obama has a 17-point edge over Mr. Romne y when voters are asked if a candidate cares about their needs and problems.

As the president makes his first campaign visit of the year to Wisconsin on Sa turday, the poll found that Mr. Obama was the choice of 51 percent to 45 percent for Mr. Romney among likely voters. The six-point lead, which includes those wh o said they were leaning in one direction or another, marks a slight shift in Mr . Obama's direction since Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin joined the Re publican ticket last month.

The findings of the poll, along with the fallo ut from newly exposed remarks Mr. Romney made at a fund-raiser in which he blunt ly suggested that 47 percent of Americans saw themselves as victims who are depe ndent on the government, offer a window into the challenges confronting his camp aign here and other important swing states during the final 48 days of the race.

Rob Jankowski, an independent voter who supported Mr. Obama four years ago but has been disappointed by his economic leadership and disapproves of his hea lth care plan, is among the 3 percent of voters in the survey who say they are s till undecided. He said he did not feel loyalty to Mr. Obama simply because he s upported him last time, but he said Mr. Romney had not made his case.

''Oba ma is putting out his plans and his details and being more public on that, but w ith Romney it's kind of gray,'' said Mr. Jankowski, 39, speaking in a follow-up interview Tuesday afternoon here in Jefferson Park, as a cool breeze rustled the tree leaves. ''I'd like to know more -- educate me.''

The New York Times, in collaboration with Quinnipiac and CBS News, is tracking the presidential race with recurring polls in six states. The latest collection of surveys also inclu ded Colorado, where Mr. Romney is running nearly even with Mr. Obama, and Virgin ia, where Mr. Obama has a narrow advantage of four percentage points, both of wh ich are inside the survey's margin of sampling error of plus or minus three perc entage points for each candidate.

But for Mr. Romney, Wisconsin offers one of the best chances to fight on Mr. Obama's terrain in the Midwest and expand th e battleground map. The Romney campaign has redirected some of its money and man power once intended for Michigan and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, hoping to create as many paths as possible to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

The importance of Wisconsin was amplified this week when the l eading ''super PAC'' supporting Mr. Romney, Restore Our Future, bought $820,000 in television advertising for the final stretch of the race. The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee also have stepped up their investments in the state, underscoring the urgency for Mr. Romney to try and change the landsc ape of the race.

Yet the poll found that Republicans have formidable challe nges in Wisconsin, with Mr. Obama expanding his lead among women and remaining f ar more competitive among men than in many battleground states. The poll found t hat 55 percent of women support Mr. Obama and 41 percent prefer Mr. Romney, but among men there is only a two percentage point difference between the candidates .

''I think Obama has done a much better job than anyone realizes,'' said Laurie Bookstein, 62, an independent voter in Milwaukee, speaking in a follow-up interview. ''I think Obama's honesty and integrity in creating a better economy is important to the country as a whole.''

The degree to which Wisconsin wi ll develop as a top-tier battleground state depends on how the opening waves of advertising by candidates and outside groups settle in.

The airwaves here w ere relatively quiet until last week. Wisconsin has become more appealing to Mr. Romney out of necessity, aides said, with his campaign worried about its trajec tory in Ohio and Virginia.

A victory in Iowa and Wisconsin, for example, wo uld mean 16 electoral votes, more than the 13 of Virginia. If Mr. Romney prevail ed in New Hampshire, that would give him 20 electoral votes, surpassing Ohio's 1 8.

The Romney campaign is strengthened here by one of the most tested party operations in the country, which earlier this summer helped Gov. Scott Walker f ight off a recall challenge. The governor's job approval rating is now 52 percen t, the poll found. Republicans say their gains in 2010, along with Mr. Walker's victory in June, have wiped away Mr. Obama's 14-point advantage from 2008.

The president's overall approval rating in Wisconsin stands at 51 percent, and h e holds an advantage over Mr. Romney across all significant sets of issues, from handling health care, taxes, Medicare and the ability to handle an internationa l crisis.

The poll found that Mr. Romney is backed by more independents tha n Mr. Obama, and a majority of those who are more enthusiastic about voting this year. But Mr. Romney, who has struggled to build a personal connection and an e mpathetic appeal, is viewed by 55 percent of likely voters here as a candidate w hose policies favor the rich compared with 10 percent for the middle class.

The state polls were conducted by telephone, both landlines and cellphones, fro m Sept. 11 to 17 among 1,485 likely voters in Wisconsin, 1,497 likely voters in Colorado and 1,474 likely voters in Virginia. The findings are largely similar a cross the states, particularly Mr. Romney's fading advantage on being the candid ate best equipped to turn around the economy.

''I am voting against Obama b ecause four years ago he made these promises as to what he would do to improve t he economy,'' said Arnold Gesch, 83, a retired real estate broker and independen t voter from Sheboygan, speaking in a follow-up interview. ''I just have no fait h in him.''

It remains an open question how voters will react to the challe nges facing Mr. Romney, including his forceful defense of a secretly recorded vi deo of him at a fund-raiser in May. But a sense of agitation was detected in som e follow-up interviews Tuesday at his suggestion about people being dependent on government.

''I'm not a bottom-feeder like they try to make us out to be,' ' said Eddie Gochenour, 66, a retired engineer from Danville, Va., who said he h ad been a Republican for 44 years but intended to support Mr. Obama.

''I ea rned what I'm getting, and worked all my life for my benefits. I have a good nes t egg, but I also earned what I'm getting from the government.''

PHOTOS: LAURIE BOOKSTEIN; JIM MORRISON; ROB JANKOWSKI (PHOTOGRAPHS BY AN DY MANIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A17)

CHARTS: The candidates; Their policie s; The role of government (A17)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/ politics/obama-holds-edge-over-romney-in-wisconsin-poll-shows.html


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



864 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 19, 2012 Wednesday
The New York Times on t he Web


 Romney's Speech From Mother Jones Video


BYLINE: By THE NEW YORK TIMES


SECTION: Section ; Column 0; National Desk; TRANSCRIPT; Pg.


LENGTH: 4788 words


Followi ng is the transcript of a video recorded during a private fund-raiser for Mitt R omney last May, published by Mother Jones magazine and transcribed by The New Yo rk Times.

MITT ROMNEY: The president's foreign policy, in my opinion, is form ed in part by a perception he has that his magnetism and his charm and his persu asiveness is so compelling, that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chav ez and Ahmadinejad and they'll find that we're such wonderful people that they'l l go on with us. And they'll stop doing bad things. It's an extraordinarily naïv e perception and it led to huge errors in North Korea, in Iraq, obviously in Ira n, in Egypt, around the world.

My own view is that the centerpi ece of American foreign policy has to be strength. Everything I do will be calcu lated to increasing America's strength. When you stand by your allies, you incre ase your strength. When you attack your allies, you become weaker. When you stan d by your principles, you get stronger. When you have a big military that's bigg er than anyone else's, you're stronger. When you have a strong economy, you buil d American strength. For me, everything is about strength and communicating to p eople what is and is not acceptable. It's speaking softly but carrying a very, v ery, very big stick. And this president, instead, speaks loudly and carries a ti ny stick. And that's not the right course for foreign policy.

I saw Dr. Kis singer in New York ...[Aside] You're not eating!

CROWD MEMBER: I'm mesmeriz ed.

MR. ROMNEY: Yeah ... don't spoil [unintelligible].

I saw Dr. Kissi nger. I said to him, ''How are we perceived around the world?'' And he said, one word: ''Weak.'' We are weak. And that's how this president is perceived, by our friends and unfortunately by our foes. And it's no wonder that people like Kim Jong-un, the new leader of North Korea, announces a long-range missile test only a week after he said he wouldn't. Because it's like, what's this president goin g to do about it? You know, if you can't act, don't threaten. Please?

CROWD MEMBER: Just to follow up on Iraq ...

MR. ROMNEY: I just want to show you how it's done, you take this in your fork [unintelligible].

CROWD MEMBER: [ unintelligible] ... the hostages, on his inauguration. ... My question is really , how can you sort of duplicate that scenario?

MR. ROMNEY: I should ask you , how do I duplicate that scenario?

CROWD MEMBER: I think it had to do with the fact that the Iranians perceive that Reagan would do something to really ge t them out. In other words, he would have the strength, and that's why I'm follo wing on your thing about strength. That's why I'm suggesting that something that you say over the next few months gets the Iranians to understand that their pur suit of a bomb is something that you would [unintelligible]. And I think that's something that could possibly resonate very well with the American public.

MR. ROMNEY: I appreciate the idea.

One of the things that's frustrating to me is that, on a typical day like this, where I do three or four events like thi s, the number of foreign policy questions I get are between zero and one. And th e American people are not concentrated at all upon China, on Russia, Iran, Iraq. This president's failure to put in place a status of forces agreement allowing ten to twenty thousand troops to stay in Iraq: unthinkable! And yet, in that ele ction, in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we had hostages in Iran, I me an, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the de sert, I mean, that was the focus and so him solving that made all the difference in the world. I'm afraid today if you simply got Iran to agree to stand down, t hey'd go, ''Hold on.'' If something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.

CROWD MEMBER: Tonight's your lucky night; more foreign policy. With the first time you were in Jerusale m, we appreciate you being there. How do you think that the Palestinian problem can be solved, and what are you going to do about it?

MR. ROMNEY: I'm torn by two perspectives in this regard. One is the one which I've had for some time, which is that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peac e, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. Now why do I say that?

Some might say, well, just let the Palestinians have the West Bank and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And t hen come a couple of thorny questions. I don't have a map here to look up geogra phy, but the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, r ight next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It's, what, the border would be seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank. Nine miles. The challenge is, the other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian sta te would either be Syria at one point or Jordan. And of course, the Iranians wou ld want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, and w hat they did into Gaza. Which is the Iranians would want to bring missiles, that armament, into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel, of cou rse, would have to say, ''That can't happen. We've got to keep Iranians from bri nging weaponry into the West Bank.'' Well, that means that, who, the Israelis ar e going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria and this new Palestinian nati on? Well, the Palestinians would say, ''No way. We're an independent country. Yo u can't guard our border with other Arab nations.''

And then how about the airport. How about flying into this Palestinian nation? Are we going to allow m ilitary aircraft to come in? And weaponry to come in? And if not, who's going to keep it from coming in? Well, the Israelis. Well, the Palestinians are going to say, ''We're not an independent nation if Israel is able to come in and tell us what to land at our airport.''

These problems -- they're very hard to solv e. And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes. Committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel. And these tho rny issues. And I say, there's just no way. So what you do is you move things al ong the best way you can, you hope for some degree of stability. But you recogni ze this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and T aiwan. We have a potentially volatile situation, but we sort of live with it. An d we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately somehow, something wi ll happen and resolve it. We don't go to war to try and resolve it imminently.<P A> On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state -- and I wo n't mention which one it was -- but this individual said to me, ''You know, I th ink there's a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israeli s after the Palestinian elections.'' I said, ''Really?'' And, you know, his answ er was yes. I think there's some prospect. And I didn't delve into it, but you k now, I always keep open the idea. But I have to tell you, the idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst i dea in the world. We have done that time and time and time again. It does not wo rk. So the only answer is show strength, again. American strength, American reso lve, and if the Palestinians someday reach a point where they want peace more th an we're trying to force peace on them, then it's worth having the discussion. B ut until then it's just wishful thinking.

CROWD MEMBER: Individuals in this room obviously are your supporters. I am very concerned about the average Ameri can who doesn't know you. There is a terrible misconception and I spend numerous hours trying [unintelligible] to be your defender when you are such a deserving individual. You were saying years ago that ''I called George Bush Sr., and he h ad helped me in my campaign in Massachusetts when I ran for Senate. I told him t hat there was a guy named Clinton who was [unintelligible] for the following rea sons, and he laughed.'' Right now, I'm very concerned. Women do not want to vote for you. Hispanics, the majority of them do not want to vote for you. College s tudents don't. After talking to them and explaining and rationalizing on a one-o n-one basis, we are able to change their opinions, but at a mass level, what do you want us to do, this group here, as your emissaries, going out to convert the se individuals to someone who's obviously going to be such an incredible asset t o this country. We want you. What do we do? Just tell us how we can help.

M R. ROMNEY: I have some good news for you. It's not impossible. And the reason I say that is because, for instance, The New York Times had a poll last week, The New York Times and NBC, and I was leading by two points among women. Now the pre sident came out and said: ''This is an outrageous poll. They don't know what the y're doing.'' But, by the way, the polls at this stage make no difference at all . The point is, women are open to supporting me; they like the president persona lly, but they're disappointed. They're disappointed with the jobs that they're s eeing for their kids. They're disappointed with their own economic standing righ t now. So we can capture women's votes.

We're having a much harder time wit h Hispanic voters. And if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the D emocrats as the African-American voting bloc has in the past, well, we're in tro uble as a party and, I think, as a nation.

CROWD MEMBER: Rubio!

[Crowd rumblings, unintelligible, and laughter]

MR. ROMNEY: We have some great Hi spanic leaders in our party that will help communicate what our party stands for , and frankly, what I need you to do is raise millions of dollars because the pr esident is going to have eight hundred, nine hundred million dollars. That's by far the most important thing you can do, because you don't have the capacity to speak to hundreds of thousands of people. I will be in those debates. There will be, I don't know, a hundred and fifty million Americans watching. If I do well, it'll help. If I don't, it won't help.

CROWD MEMBER: You will do so well. Your debates are incredible.

[Applause]

MR. ROMNEY: Thank you. But a dvertising makes a difference. The president will engage in a personal, characte r assassination campaign, and so we'll have to fire back, one in defense and, nu mber two, in offense. And that'll take money. By the way, you'll see the ads her e. Florida will be one of those states that is the key state, and so all of the money will get spent in 10 states and this is one of them. So the best thing I c an ask you to do is, yeah, sure, talk to people and tell them that you know me a nd word of mouth makes a big difference, but you know, I'm not terribly well kno wn by the American public because ...

CROWD MEMBER: You're known as a rich boy. They say he's a rich man.

MR. ROMNEY: Don't worry. Given all those neg ative things, the fact that I'm either tied or close to the president, and the f act that he's out there talking about the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Lade n being captured, unemployment coming down, unleashing his campaign, we're still sort of tied? That's very interesting. Please.

CROWD MEMBER: I would disag ree with that. I think a lot of young children coming out of college feel they w ere let down by the president. They feel that there's not a job out there for th em, and they thought they were going to make sixty thousand and now they're maki ng thirty thousand. Very similar to the U6. My question to you is, why don't you stick up for yourself? To me, you should be so proud that you're wealthy. That' s what we all aspire to, we kill ourselves. We don't work 9-to-5. We're way ... [unintelligible] five days a week. I raise four girls five days a week. Why not stick up for yourself and say why is it bad to aspire to be wealthy and successf ul? Why is it bad to kill yourself and why is it bad to cut thirty jobs at the d eath of three hundred? When there's people cutting jobs ... you saved companies that were failing. So my question is, when does that [unintelligible] ... worked his way up to nothing to his present success.

MR. ROMNEY: You heard in my speech tonight ... oh, you weren't here. In every stump speech I give, I speak a bout the fact that people who bring and achieve enormous success do not make us poorer, they make us better off. And the Republican audience that I typically sp eak to applauds. I said that tonight, and the media is there and they write abou t it, they say that Mr. Romney defends success and America and dreamers and so f orth. So they write about it. But in terms of what gets through to the American consciousness, I have heard a [unintelligible] lid full of that, as to what they write about. We will have three debates, we'll have a chance to talk about that at the debates, there will be ads which attack me, I will fire back, in a way t hat describes the best way we can ... I mean the theme of my speech is ... I win d up talking about how the thing which I find most disappointing in this preside nt is his attack of one America against another America, the division of America based on going after those who have been successful. And then I quote Marco Rub io in my speeches, I say Marco Rubio ... I don't think I said that at the fund-r aising event earlier today, but I did when I was ... I just said, Senator Rubio says that when he grew up here, poor, that they looked at people who had a lot o f wealth and his parents never once said, we need some of what they have, they s hould give us something. Instead they said, if we work hard and go to school, so meday we might be able to have the same thing.

[Applause]

I will cont inue to do that. How much of that gets picked up ... there's so many things that don't get picked up in a campaign because people aren't watching and, by the wa y, most people don't watch during the summer. I say we're going to go into a sea son here, starting in mid-June, where almost no one pays attention. Then, after Labor Day, in September and October, that's when it'll get [unintelligible]

CROWD MEMBER: Over the past three years, all everybody's been told is, don't w orry, we'll take care of it. How are you going to do it, with two months before the election, to convince everybody you've got to take care of yourself?

MR . ROMNEY: Well, there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the preside nt no matter what. There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement and govern ment should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter wha t. I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49 ... I mean, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax; 47 percent of Americans pa y no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. He'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that's what they sell every four y ears. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center, that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in som e cases, emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what he looks like.

Wh en you ask those people ... I find it amazing. We do all these polls and poll al l these people to see where we stand in the polls. But 45 percent of the people will vote for the Republican, and 48 or 49 ...

[There is missing video foot age between the two clips.]

... about twice as much as China. Not 10 times as much, like this reporter said. And we have responsibility for the whole worl d. They're only focused on one little area of the world -- the South China Sea, the East China Sea. That's it. And they're building the military at a rapid rate . This idea that we've always spent so much money on the military. ... It's like , ''Guys, don't overthink how strong we are.'' We have said, you probably know, this was a couple of years ago, but we had one of our aircraft carriers standing by Japan, and the Chinese pulled up behind us in a diesel sub, a super quiet di esel sub, pulled up behind us. We could have been torpedoed. We're not that kind of ... our Navy is smaller in number of ships in any time since 1917. And this president wants to shrink it. The list goes on. Our Air Force is older and small er than any time since '47, when the Air Force was formed. And he wants to shrin k it. If we go the way of Europe, which is spending 1 to 2 percent of its econom y on the military, we will not be able to have freedom in the world.

CROWD MEMBER: When the electorate tunes in in September, the markets are going to be l ooking at marginal tax rates going up and another debt ceiling fight ...

MR . ROMNEY: Yeah.

CROWD MEMBER: ... but sequestration under the debt ceiling deal ...

MR. ROMNEY: What do they call it, tax again? Isn't that what they call it?

[Laughter] CROWD MEMBER: Now, the Obamacare praxis on dividends an d capital gains, I mean ... in the markets, you are going to be speaking very li vely in October on all of those issues.

MR. ROMNEY: They'll probably be loo king at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I am going to win, the marke ts will be happy. If it looks like the president is going to win, the markets wi ll not be terribly happy. It depends on, of course, which markets you are talkin g about and which types of commodities and so forth. But my own view is that if we win on Nov. 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of thi s country. We'll see capital come back, and we'll see, without actually doing an ything, we'll actually get a boost to the economy. Um, if the president gets re- elected, I don't know what'll happen. I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my o wn view is that if we get the ''tax again,'' as they call it, Jan. 1st with this president and with a Congress that can't work together ... it really is frighte ning. It's really frightening in my view.

CROWD MEMBER: Fifty-four percent of American voters think China's economy is bigger than the U.S. When I first me t you four or five years ago, you did a data call where you went very granular a nd you said, ''Look guys,'' this is a small group, he says, ''This is it. This i s what it is.'' Tell us like it is. How are you going to win if 54 percent of th e voters think China's economy is bigger than ours? Or if it costs 4 cents to ma ke a penny and we keep making pennies? Canada got it right a month ago. Why isn' t someone saying, ''Stop making pennies, round it to the nearest nickel?'' That' s an easy thing, you know, compared to Iran. I want to see you take the gloves o ff and talk to the people that read the paper and read the book and care about k nowing the facts and knowledge is power, as opposed to people that are swayed by what sounds good at the moment. You know, if you turned it into, like, ''Eat wh at you kill,'' it'd be a landslide, in my humble opinion.

MR. ROMNEY: [Laug hs] Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the cou ntry. And people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a Web site that lays out white papers and a whole series of issues that I care about. I have to tell you, I don't think this will have a significant impact on my elec tability. I wish it did. I think our ads will have a much bigger impact. I think the debates will have a big impact. Um ...

CROWD MEMBER: [Most of comment unintelligible] ... Peterson ... in trouble 20 years ago.

MR. ROMNEY: But t hat's my point. Which is, being right, my dad used to say, ''Being right early i s not good in politics.'' And, in a setting like this, a highly intellectual sub ject or a discussion of a whole series of important topics typically doesn't win elections. And there are, there are ... I mean, for instance, this president wo n because of hope and change. All right? He won because of hope and change.

CROWD MEMBER: Keep the change!

MR. ROMNEY: Yeah, well ...

[Laughter]

MR. ROMNEY: So, I can tell you that I have a very good team of extraordina rily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particula r who've done races around the world. I didn't realize these guys in the U.S., t he Karl Rove equivalents, they do races all over the world -- in Armenia and Afr ica and Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do the se races and they see which ads work and which processes work best. And we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell 'em to you, but I'd have to, you know, shoot you. Hopefully, we'll be successful.

[Laughte r]

CROWD MEMBER: I think one of the aspects about the changes that worked well for Obama four years ago was he promised to bring us more honest, transpare nt government to Washington. I've been around politics for this campaign. I work ed even with Barry Goldwater in 1964, so I've got the oldest Republican [unintel ligible] ... but from what I see, particularly in the last seven months in my ow n personal involvement in the issue, is the government in Washington right now i s permeated by cronyism, outright corruption. ... Our regulatory agencies that a re supposed to protect the public are protecting the people that they're suppose d to be regulating. And I think people are fed up with that. It doesn't matter w hether you are in the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street. People see that the gover nment is working for the powerful interests and the people who are well connecte d politically and not for the common person, which threatens that whole idea tha t we have this great opportunity, which we should have and have had historically in the West for anybody from whatever background to become successful. One way in which that becomes compromised is when the government is no longer seen as an honest agent and when our tax dollars are not really being put to work for us b ut for the people who are plugged in politically. You know, you have cases like [unclear], which I talk about and am involved in. You have Eric Holder, who is p robably the most corrupt attorney general we've had ever in American history. An d I think it's something, that if spun the right way and in simple terms, can ac tually resonate with the American people. Obama did not keep his promises. Nancy Pelosi, who was supposed to give us an honest Congress, has given us just the o pposite as speaker. And I think that's a campaign issue that can work well. I'm optimistic that you'll be elected president, and my recommendation would be to c lean house immediately ...

MR. ROMNEY: Yeah.

[Laughter]

CROWD MEM BER: The S.E.C. and the C.F.T.C. are disaster areas..

MR. ROMNEY: I wish we weren't unionized so we could go a lot deeper than you are actually allowed to go. [To waiter] Am I in the way here? I can say this, and I'm sure you'll agree with this as well. We speak with voters across the country about their perceptio ns. Those people I told you, the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring to o ur side, they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. And by the way, when yo u say to them, do you think Barack Obama is a failure, if they were women, they say no. They like him. But when you say, are you disappointed that his policies haven't worked, they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don't want to be told that they were wrong, that he's a bad guy, that he does bad things, tha t he's corrupt. Those people that we have to get, they want to believe that they did the right thing but he just wasn't up to the task. They love the phrase tha t he's over his head. But you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans . We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us. And so the things that animate us a re not the things that animate them. And the best success I have in speaking wi th those people is saying the president's been a disappointment. He told you he 'd keep unemployment below 8 percent. It hasn't been below 8 percent since. Fift y percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty pe rcent of the kids in high school in our 15 largest cities won't graduate from hi gh school. What are they going to do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, ''Yeah, I think you're ri ght.'' What he's going to do, by the way, is try to vilify me as someone who's b een successful, or who's closed businesses or laid people off, and isn't he an e vil, bad guy? And that may work. I actually think that right now people are sayi ng, ''I want someone who can make things better, that's going to motivate me. Wh o can get jobs for my kids and get rising incomes?'' And I hope to be able to be the one to poise that battle. Yeah, please.

CROWD MEMBER: I've seen Obama a lot of times he's done talk shows, interviews. I've never seen you on any of them, and I think a lot of women [unintelligible] ... I think they would see you in a different light. I think a lot of women especially do not watch debates, d o not come to these functions. I think you have to show your face more on TV an d talk like a regular ... like a Smith. I think you could maybe reach a lot of people.

MR. ROMNEY: Well, thank you. I have been on ''The View'' twice now .

[Laughter]

It went very well. I've done the evening shows. I've been on Letterman a couple of times, I've been on Leno more than a couple of times, and now Letterman hates me because I've been on Leno more than him. They're very jealous of each other, as you know. And I was asked to go on ''Saturday Night L ive.'' I did not do that, in part because you want to show that you're fun and y ou're a good person, but you also want to be presidential. And ''Saturday Night Live'' has the potential of looking slapstick and not presidential. But ''The Vi ew'' is fine, although ''The View'' is high risk because of the five women on it , only one is conservative and four are sharp-tongued and not conservative, Whoo pi Goldberg in particular. Although the last time I was on the show, she said t o me, ''You know what? I think I could vote for you.'' And I said, ''I must hav e done something really wrong.''

[Laughter]

I've got to sit down and . .. Darlene, you get the last word.

DARLENE: I was just going to say, I thin k our media strategy would be sending Anne on ''The View.'' She is your best adv ocate, she connects so well, I mean, people talk so much about disconnect and so meone said over there that people use the term ''rich guy,'' and we know that yo u ...

MR. ROMNEY: You know I'm poor as a church mouse!

DARLENE: We kno w that you value [unintelligible] and hard work, but Anne really connects with w omen and she can tell a story and she's the perfect person who can go on Matt L auer and go on Victoria ... and go on ''The View'' and go on all of these people and really get the women connecting to you ... and I think she's a great ...<PA > MR. ROMNEY: I think you're right, I think you're absolutely right. We use A nne sparingly right now so that people don't get tired of her or start attacking .

DARLENE: Who gets tired of Anne?

[Laughter]

MR. ROMNEY: But you will see more of her in the September-October time frame and you know, we had, what is her name, Hilary Rosen, who attacked her and that made Anne much more vi sible to the American people which I think is very helpful. Gave her a platform she wouldn't have had otherwise. And I agree with you, I think she will be extr aordinarily helpful.

DARLENE: Just the people who friended her on Facebook or whatever happened after the Hilary Rosen came out ... that showed you the val ue of social networking and how important new media can be in this election cycl e. And I just think she can be ... and I know she wants you to win.

MR. RO MNEY: She's out there. She's in Texas tonight, she was in Louisiana last night, she's raising money in those places. She was at Ben Crenshaw's house for dinner tonight, isn't that something? So there are some benefits. One of the benefits I get is eating the world's greatest dessert, which I will. Thank you.

[Appl ause]


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/politics/mitt-romneys-speec h-from-mother-jones-video.html


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Text


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



865 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 19, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Role-Playing TV Ad Stirs Up a Kentucky Race
< BYL>By JOHN ELIGON


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 18


LENGTH: 632 words


The man wearing a hard hat and jean overalls draped over a neon green T-shirt has his arms folded and stares sternly into the camera. St anding on a graveled railroad track, he speaks bluntly of the decline of the coa l industry as images of Ravenna, Ky., flash across the screen. The blame, he say s, is with President Obama, Representative Ben Chandler, a Democrat from Kentuck y, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

This latest television ad from An dy Barr, the Lexington lawyer running as a Republican to unseat Mr. Chandler, ha s drawn sharp criticism from the incumbent - in large part because the man dress ed as a coal miner is a coal company executive who has contributed thousands of dollars to politicians, mostly Republicans, and has rubbed shoulders with the li kes of Mitt Romney and Karl Rove at fund-raising events. The executive, Heath Lo vell, vice president of River View Coal, does not live in Ravenna or anywhere in the district Mr. Barr is running for.

"His ad is not only shame fully deceptive, but it's an insult to hard-working Kentucky coal miners who put their lives on the line every day to power our communities and our economy," Er ic Nagy, Mr. Chandler's campaign manager, said in a statement. "Ben Chandler has a long history of fighting to protect coal jobs and ensure the safety of coal m iners, and Barr should be ashamed to use a corporate shill to suggest otherwise. "

Mr. Lovell and Mr. Barr's campaign pushed back forcefully, saying that Mr . Lovell started working in coal mines as a teenager and worked his way up to be come an executive. Mr. Lovell said his father and grandfather worked in coal min es. He still goes into the mine he manages every week, Mr. Lovell said.

"T hat was my hard hat in the video," he said. "That was not some costume that I've put on."

David Host, a spokesman for Mr. Barr, said the idea for the ad wa s conceived during a jobs tour in the spring in which residents of Ravenna told the candidate that their town was once a thriving railroad hub that transported coal, but much of that industry has since vanished. Mr. Barr has blamed that on what his campaign describes as burdensome regulations put in place by the Enviro nmental Protection Agency, backed by Mr. Obama and Mr. Chandler.

Even thoug h Mr. Lovell was not from the area, he was speaking of problems the coal industr y faces statewide that he sees firsthand, Mr. Host said.

"What he has to sa y accurately reflects the sentiments of miners in his mine and across Kentucky, about the war on coal," Mr. Host said. "They're concerned about their future, ab out their jobs. That certainly is something that the ad brings across."

Mr. Chandler's campaign argues that he has been an important ally of the mining ind ustry, advocating for the safety and rights of miners and speaking out against o verreaching regulations.

In the ad, Mr. Lovell stands in front of another m an dressed in miner's clothing.

"Devastating," he says. "Four, five, six a day. Northbound. Southbound. Full rails, full of coal. Now near nothing." He goe s on to say that Mr. Obama, Mr. Chandler and the E.P.A. "are destroying us."

"They're putting the coal industry out of business, and it's just devastating, " he adds. "This is our way of life."

Mr. Lovell and his wife, Lori, have d onated $21,400 to candidates for federal office over the past two years includin g to Mr. Romney and Rand Paul. Mr. Lovell was at a fund-raiser at the home of th e founder of Papa John's Pizza, according to pictures on his wife's Facebook pag e, one of which showed him making a pizza with Mr. Romney.

"Heath and Mitt Romney," Mr. Lovell's wife wrote about the picture. "I am pretty sure this was t he greatest day of Heath's life!"

This is a more complete version of the st ory than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes. com/2012/09/18/dust-up-over-ad-in-kentucky-house-race-featuring-executive-dresse d-as-miner/


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTO ( PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDY BARR FOR CONGRESS)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



866 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 19, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Stands Behind Message Caught On Video


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and ASHLEY PARKER; Reporting was contributed by Michael Barbaro from Salt Lake City, Michael Shear and Jennifer Steinhauer from Washington, and Trip Gabriel and Nicholas Confessore from New York.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1220 words


Mitt Romney on Tuesday fully embraced the substance of his secretly recorded comments that 47 percent of Americans are too dependent on government, saying that his views helped define the philosophical choice for voters in his campaign against President Obama.

''The president's view is one of a larger government; I disagree,'' Mr. Romney said in an interview on Fox News. ''I think a society based on a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that's the wrong course for America.''

The comments were Mr. Romney's attempt to find some benefit in the political furor after the disclosure of statements he made at a closed fund-raiser in Florida in May, where he spoke of nearly half of Americans who pay no federal income taxes and, in his analysis, would never vote for him.

Those are people, he said at the fund-raiser, who are ''dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.''

Mr. Romney, who on Monday called the remarks inelegant, suggested on Tuesday that it was time for a full debate about dependency, entitlements and what his campaign characterized as a long history of Mr. Obama's support for ''redistributionist'' policies.

But despite the effort by Mr. Romney to take the offensive, his campaign spent the day working to keep the episode from becoming a turning point in a campaign that until now has remained neck and neck, and trying to minimize the damage from the disclosure of another set of remarks from the fund-raiser, in which he suggested that a two-state solution for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians -- longstanding United States policy -- was not feasible.

Some Republicans applauded Mr. Romney's determination not to back away from his statements about taxes and entitlements, which echo themes promoted in recent years by many conservatives, including Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan. Speaking to a Nevada TV station on Tuesday, Mr. Ryan echoed Mr. Romney's line of attack on Mr. Obama and government dependency, though he said Mr. Romney's comments were ''inarticulate.'' But the developments gave Democrats new ammunition to make their case that Mr. Romney is out of touch with the needs and values of the middle class and does not understand the economic forces at work in many families.

It also left some Republicans distancing themselves from Mr. Romney's remarks. And it forced the Romney campaign to adopt a new message just a day after starting an ad campaign built around different themes, as officials closely monitored whether donors were growing more nervous about the management of Mr. Romney's candidacy and his prospects in November.

In an appearance on ''Late Show'' with David Letterman, Mr. Obama accused Mr. Romney of ''writing off a big chunk of the country'' and said it would be wrong for a politician to ''suggest that because someone doesn't agree with me that they're victims or they're unpatriotic.''

In the editing bays of the pro-Obama ''super PAC'' Priorities USA Action, producers were finding ways to splice bits of Mr. Romney's commentary at the fund-raiser into videos and television advertisements, a sign that the recordings will provide the Democrats fodder until Election Day.

Two Republican Senate candidates in hard-fought races in the Democratic territory of the Northeast, Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts and Linda McMahon of Connecticut, disavowed the remarks. ''Not the way I view the world,'' Mr. Brown said; ''I disagree,'' Ms. McMahon said.

Even some conservative intellectuals argued with Mr. Romney's description of the 47 percent of people who do not pay income taxes as Obama voters. They noted that among that 47 percent were potentially Romney-supporting ''seniors, who might well 'believe they are entitled to health care,' '' as the Weekly Standard editor William Kristol wrote, and ''lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country.''

Mr. Romney effectively ceded that point in his interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, saying he was referring instead to ''those that are dependent on government and those that think government's job is redistribute -- I'm not going to get them.''

The tension of the moment spilled out in unguarded moments with Mr. Romney's aides, one of whom likened the situation to a circus. Two advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity in separate interviews, expressed frustration that the comments at the fund-raiser -- held at the Boca Raton, Fla., home of the financier Marc Leder -- played into the image that Democrats have promoted all year of Mr. Romney as uncaring about average voters and concerned only about himself and his wealthy friends.

Mr. Romney's campaign organized back-to-back conference calls to reassure donors, featuring a coterie of top advisers -- Matt Rhoades, the campaign manager; Spencer Zwick, the finance director; and Beth Myers and Ed Gillespie, both senior advisers. One of the calls, with Mr. Romney's national finance committee, was moved up from its usually scheduled time near the end of the week, and on the second, larger donor call, the campaign urged the donors to ''have at it.''

Later on Tuesday, National Review reported that Mr. Romney had faced such a cash shortage while awaiting the ability to spend his general election money that he had to borrow $20 million in August to get him through the end of his convention. The money was easily covered by his general election account.

Mr. Romney's aides said that they were keeping perspective in a way that the news media ''feeding frenzy'' was not. A Gallup daily tracking poll that had shown Mr. Obama with a growing edge after the Democratic convention effectively had the race as a tie on Tuesday, though an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday night showed the president with more of an edge and with his approval rating reaching the 50 percent mark.

While Mr. Romney's aides played down the significance of the recordings, they said they were most unwelcome because they yet again kept Mr. Romney from getting back to his message on the economy, delivering a clearer sense to voters of where he would lead the nation.

''Every day that he is not talking about jobs he is losing an opportunity to draw a contrast with the president's abysmal record on the economy,'' said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. Referring to Medicare and Social Security, she said she feared that his comments at the fund-raiser would paint him as being against ''earned programs that people pay into'' and have ''widespread support.''

''He has just not brought sufficient clarity to what his vision for America is,'' Ms. Collins said.

Throughout the country Republicans reacted with a mix of trepidation and defiance. Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican Party of Sarasota, Fla., said he believed it would ''play into his strength,'' while Steve Armstrong, chairman of the Linn County, Iowa, Republicans, called it ''an unfortunate mistake.''

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said he believed that Mr. Romney would ultimately win the argument on substance, but cautioned that Republicans need to show that ''they are concerned about every American.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/politics/in-leaked-video-romney-says-middle-east-peace-process-likely-to-remain-unsolved-problem.html


LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Above, Mitt Romney at a campaign event Tuesday in Salt Lake City
right, Kevin Madden, a senior adviser, briefing reporters on the campaign plane as it approached Salt Lake City. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A19)


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



867 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


Sept. 18: Obama's Bounce Erodes in Two Tracking Polls


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 993 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama's decline in the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports national tracking polls has caused his chance of winning the Electoral College to slip.


President Obama has been on the decline in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. On Tuesday, his chance of winning the Electoral College dropped to 72.9 percent, from 74.8 percent on Monday. Mr. Obama is now well off his peak in the forecast, 80.8 percent, which he reached on Sept. 12.

What's causing the change? There are two major factors.

First, Mr. Obama has experienced an unmistakable decline in the two longest-running tracking polls, Gallup and Rasmussen Reports.

In the Gallup survey, Mr. Obama's lead fell to one point over Mitt Romney on Tuesday - the same number that he started with before the Democratic convention, and down from a high of a seven-point lead last week.

Mr. Obama has similarly lost his bounce in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll; in the version published on Tuesday, he was tied with Mr. Romney when voters who leaned toward a candidate were included in the tabulation, and trailed him by two points otherwise.

There are other tracking polls that show more ambiguous results. Mr. Obama's bounce has held steady (or perhaps even improved slightly) in the online tracking poll published by the RAND Corporation, showing that he maintained a lead of about three points over the past week. The Ipsos online tracking poll had Mr. Obama with a four-point lead on Tuesday, down from a peak of seven points, although that poll has been volatile.

But the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports polls can have a lot of influence on the forecast at times when there is a potential turning point in the race. The trendline adjustment that the model calculates compares changes in the results produced by the same polling firms over time. Since the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports national tracking polls have been published almost every day since the spring, they represent highly important data series in this process.

The second major reason for the shift is that the model is designed to take a skeptical view of the polls conducted for a candidate who just held his convention. Typically, the polling bounce that a candidate receives from his convention does not evaporate immediately, but can persist for a couple of weeks. We are still close enough to the Democratic convention that this adjustment applies to Mr. Obama's numbers in the polls.

The downward adjustment to Mr. Obama's numbers will gradually fade out over the next week or so. Thus, if he holds his current position in the polls, he will begin to regain ground in the FiveThirtyEight forecast.

However, it is probably not a bad idea to take a slightly skeptical view toward Mr. Obama's polls in the meantime. This is a tricky year for estimating convention bounces, with the two parties having held their conventions just one week apart, but if the model is reading the data wrongly, it will correct itself soon enough.

Mr. Obama's state polls have also been fairly mixed over the last week. He has certainly gotten a few very strong ones, like a Washington Post poll on Tuesday that put him eight points ahead among likely voters in Virginia. But there have been other surveys to show rather poor results for him, like a Rasmussen Reports poll that put him two points behind in Colorado. In general, the impression conveyed by the state polls is a fairly modest bounce in the swing states.

Still, it might be acknowledged that this is among the more confusing periods that we've seen in the polls. How do you reconcile a poll showing Mr. Obama with an eight-point lead in Virginia with another putting him at a two-point deficit in Colorado?

Why, if his standing eroded in the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports tracking polls, did he also receive a rather strong poll from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, which put him five points ahead nationally among likely voters?

These polls almost seem to inhabit different universes. As I'll describe in a separate article, the methodological choices made by pollsters may have something to do with it; Mr. Obama's bounce has been much more noticeable in polls that use live interviewers and that call cellphones.

But it does not do any good to pretend there is a consensus in the polls when there isn't. Sometimes there is simply no alternative to remaining patient until one emerges. The downward trend for Mr. Obama in the Gallup and Rasmussen trackers is closest thing we have to a theme in the polls for the time being.

The Impact of '47 Percent'

There has also been the introduction of a new event in the news cycle:the release of a video, taped secretly, showing impolitic comments that Mr. Romney made at a fund-raiser.

I begin from the premise that there is reason to be skeptical that Mr. Romney's "47 percent" comments will have all that much effect on the polls. The news media often jumps the gun in declaring events to be "game changers" when they later prove to little effect on the numbers. Mr. Romney's comments about Libya last week, for instance, were supposed to be very damaging to him, but if anything the numbers have moved toward him since then.

I do not mean to suggest that campaign controversies like this one never matter to voters. But I do think that reporters in Washington or New York, myself included, are not always the best judges of which are the exceptional cases. Furthermore, these judgments are likely to beinfluenced by the recent polls, meaning that analyses anticipating future reaction among voters may really be lagging indicators.

I have my own instincts about Mr. Romney's remarks, which are roughly as follows: even if his outlook is a bit less negative than it seemed a week ago, he is nevertheless the underdog in the race, and not in a position where he can afford to alienate any voters who might allow him to climb to 50 percent of the vote. His coalition may already be drawn too narrowly, and this won't help him with that.

But I'd place rather little value on my instincts, and rather more on the polls. We should know more about the state of the campaign a week from now than we do today.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



868 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


The Breakfast Meeting: More 47 Percent Fallout and a Diller-Rudin E-Book Venture


BYLINE: THE EDITORS


SECTION: BUSINESS; media


LENGTH: 524 words



HIGHLIGHT: Also, a French magazine is ordered to stop publishing Kate Middleton photos; and after losing to Apple in court Samsung goes after it in print.


The now-infamous 47 percent video - secretly taped at a Mitt Romney donor event in May - is still reverberating in media circles as well as political ones.

Mother Jones, which posted the full version of the video Tuesday, enjoyed one of its best days online, according to Clara Jeffery, one of the magazine's co-editors. James Carter IV, the unemployed researcher who helped bring the video to light, received a congratulatory note from his grandfather, the former president Jimmy Carter. (Earlier, Ben Smith at BuzzFeed chronicled the video's long strange trip to Mother Jones.)

President Obama had a public opportunity to respond to the video during his appearance on "Late Show" with David Letterman, saying that Mr. Romney "was writing off a big chunk of the country." As Bill Carter reports, the host also managed a reference to Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention and "got an immediate laugh by noting the empty spot next to the president and asking: 'Is there anything you want to say to the empty chair?'"

Barry Diller, the chief of IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Scott Rudin, the Broadway and Hollywood impresario, are getting into the e-book business. The pair have teamed up with Frances Coady, a publishing industry veteran, to invest in The Atavist, the Brooklyn-based electronic book publisher. The new venture, called Brightline, will look to eventually publish physical books as well.

Apple, which has aggressively gone after its rivals in commercials like "1984" and its series of "Mac vs. PC" ads, is now on the receiving end. Samsung, which recently lost a billion dollar patent case to Apple, has been taking direct aim at the new iPhone in a series of print ads, including one with the headline "It doesn't take a genius." On the blog Gizmodo, Apple fans immediately began retaliating with their own parodies based on the Samsung ads, one with the headline "Don't settle for cheap plastic."

The magazine Closer, which recently published topless photos of Kate Middleton, has been ordered by a French court to stop all distribution of the pictures and to hand over the originals to the royal family.

Also in France, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad, setting off another wave of protests in the Middle East. In New York ads calling Islamic jihad "savage," will soon appear in subways after a federal court ruled that the transit authority could not refuse the ads, which were purchased by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a pro-Israeli group.

NBC's hit show "The Voice" will add Usher and Shakira as stand-in judgeswhile two of the show's biggest stars, Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green, take one season off to record and tour.

And Steve Sabol, for years the creative force behind NFL Films, the revered and much satirized chronicler of the football league, has died at the age of 69.



LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



869 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


Romney Makes Appeal to Working-Class Men in Latest Ads


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 219 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's campaign released two ads criticizing the administration's policies on coal mining.


Mitt Romney trailsPresident Obama significantly in several key demographics - women and Hispanics chief among them.

But one area where he remains far more competitive with the president is among men. And he holds a sizable lead over the president with men who do not have college diplomas.

Working-class men - a lot of them - appear in two new ads from the Romney campaign, which feature coal workers lamenting effects of the Obama administration's policies on their industry.

"Obama's ruining the coal industry," says one doleful-looking coal worker in an ad called "War on Coal."

"They're wanting to close these mines down. I've got little ones at home, a wife who needs me," says another worker.

A second ad, called "Way of Life," features one worker who says, "The policies that the current administration has got is attacking my livelihood."

Both ads play to the theme that government regulations, which Mr. Romney frequently points out have grown under the Obama administration, are creating a climate that is hostile to businesses.

They also touch on a notion that Republican pollsters have found is especially powerful with swing voters: That many Americans are anxious about what kind of world their children will live in.

"I got two young grandsons. I'm scared for their future, let alone mine," the coal worker says.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



870 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Opinionator)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


The 47 Percent Solution


BYLINE: DAVID BROOKS and GAIL COLLLINS


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 880 words



HIGHLIGHT: Brooks and Collins on freeloadergate: What is the political price of condescension?


David Brooks: Gail, greetings from Dulles International Airport. I'm in a little clutch of travelers huddling around the electrical chargers like Napoleon's soldiers around the fire on the retreat from Moscow.

Gail Collins: David, airports are meant to make people crazy. I can understand why they might not be able to make the flights leave on time, but if they weren't plotting to torture us, they would at least put more outlets in the walls.

David: Meanwhile there's some jerk barking business orders into his cellphone at about 85 decibels, drowning out the 747s outside. Can I make the point that just because it is legal to use your phone in crowded places does not mean that it is moral?

Gail: Oh Lord, I do sympathize. We need a phone app that would allow everybody in the vicinity of one of those yellers to vote on whether or not they think their conversation sounds interesting. The results would be displayed on the loud person's cell in bright red letters.

David: Speaking of things that got under my skin, there were Mitt Romney's fund-raiser comments, as you may have heard. My official reaction was in my column this week, but underneath I couldn't help thinking about the visits I've made to community colleges around the country. These schools are attended by people whose families are often on food stamps and public assistance. When they get out, many of them won't be making enough money to pay income tax. Yet if you look at how they live - long bus rides, endless studying, full or part-time jobs on the side, complicated family issues - do we really want to call them society's freeloaders? It's just offensive and detached from reality.

Gail: Is this going to go down as the week the Romney campaign officially lost you?  On Monday, it sounded as if they were listening to your brave - albeit hopeless -- calls for them to be specific about their policy positions. They were going to give details! They didn't, but there was at least one brief shining moment when they seemed to feel guilty. And then of course the loser-moocher 47 percent video surfaced.

David: Putting the substance aside, what do you make of the politics of it? Frankly, I'm not sure how much it hurts. Did Obama's "clinging" comments have a big effect four years ago or his "you didn't build that" remark? Voters are so cynical about politicians, nothing surprises them.  What do you think?

Gail: You never can tell what's really going to resonate. A wise man told me recently that Paul Ryan's policy fibs at the convention didn't matter but the one about running a sub-three-hour marathon was devastating. It probably depends on whether seniors on Social Security realize he was talking about them.

David: I guess what's been most depressing for me is the long string of mistakes the Romney campaign has made. They didn't define their candidate over the summer, while Obama pounded away. They pick Ryan and then don't make the case for the Ryan proposals. They waste the convention by offering nothing. Then when they say they are going to get more specific, they mostly end up just going small. As a growth agenda, they suggest they are going to crack down on Chinese trade. That's triviality on stilts.

Gail: David, it does make me sad to hear you so disheartened. Although not in a way that would make me wish Romney was doing any better.

David:  I didn't expect romance from the Romney campaign, but I did expect some sort of smooth professionalism.

Gail: I did like it when they said they were going to respond to voters' desire for more details with an exciting new ad campaign, and then unveiled a 30-second TV spot that said: Mitt Romney is in favor of education and small business!

David: Having done all this kvetching, I still think Romney has a decent shot at winning. The country is heading in the wrong direction. The Democrats are much more liberal than the median voter, especially on role-of-government issues. Obama is intellectually exhausted and the country wants a change.

Gail: I am way too paranoid to argue that Obama's pulling ahead, although deep down I do sort of feel that way.

And when you're talking about people who are intellectually exhausted, I give you the Republican presidential herd. McCain? Romney? I know you think Paul Ryan is a great idea guy, but the campaign has come to realize that once the public gets a good look at his great ideas, they run the other way.

David: No matter how much Romney screws up, I get the sense that the country is asking permission to switch leaders. Romney is making it hard, but they just keep asking. I see, for example, that the Gallup daily tracking poll has Obama up by 1 percentage point. The convention bounce is gone. The fundamental gravitational forces of the election still apply.

Gail: I don't agree, David. Any Republican campaign that leaves you this depressed is in big trouble.

David:  Of course as I sit here, surrounded by loud-talkers who are in danger of having a laptop shoved down their throats, I don't know what the public reaction to freeloadergate will be. Memo to conservatives: Don't hate America. Don't hate even 47 percent of America. It's unattractive and it's always wrong.



LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



871 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


'Failing American Families'


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 152 words



HIGHLIGHT: Mitt Romney's campaign released an ad highlighting the drop in average household income in the context of the Obama presidency.


With its matter-of-fact "this or that" cadence, this 30-second ad recalls the famous 1980s "This is your brain on drugs" commercials. "This was household income when President Obama took office; this was the national debt," an announcer says as a bar chart adjusts accordingly, with the national debt bar growing as the income bar falls.

The image then shifts to Mr. Romney explaining to an audience that he would cut government spending. "We can't keep buying and spending and passing on debts to our kids. And I'll stop it," he says as a shot of a woman in a cap and gown hugging a child is shown.

By highlighting the drop in average household income - which the ad puts in the context of the Obama presidency, ignoring that incomes began falling when George W. Bush was still in office - Mr. Romney is reinforcing a point he makes repeatedly: that Americans are not better off today than they were four years ago.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



872 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 19, 2012 Wednesday


'Dear Daughter'


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 179 words



HIGHLIGHT: In a new ad, the Romney campaign highlights economic statistics that, standing on their own, suggest that the economic picture for women is far worse than it is for men.


Mr. Romney has a lot of catching up to do among women. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll has Mr. Obama up by 12 percentage points.

In this ad, the Romney campaign highlights economic statistics that, standing on their own, suggest that the economic picture for women is far worse than it is for men.

"That's what Obama's policies have done for women," an announcer says, in a rebuttal to Mr. Obama's claims that Republicans have waged a "war on women." As a chubby-cheeked baby girl plays in her mother's arms, the announcer says, "Welcome, daughter."

It is true, as the ad points out, that the poverty level among women, at 16.3 percent, is the highest in 17 years, according to the Census Bureau. But the unemployment rate for men is 8.3 percent; for women it is 7.8 percent. The ad also notes that more than 5.5 million women are unemployed, about a half-million more than when Mr. Obama took office. But the ad does not say that the number of unemployed women started to rise sharply in 2008, before he took office, and has come down from a peak of 6.4 million in 2010.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



873 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 10:50 PM EST


Senate Democratic candidates look strong in recent polling;
Recent surveys show that strength for Democratic candidates in several key races.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 745 words


The latest Marquette Law School poll of the Wisconsin Senate race shows Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) leading former governor Tommy Thompson (R) , 50 percent to 41 percent, a sharp turnabout from a mid-August survey that showed the Republican ahead by the same margin.

It's the most recent (and perhaps most dramatic) survey released this week with good news for Senate Democrats, who have shored up their standing in several battlegrounds.

In Wisconsin, the well-known Thompson's mid-August victory in a bruising Republican primary was a boon to the GOP's chances of picking up the seat. But in the weeks since he won, things haven't been so rosy. A Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll released Wednesday showed Baldwin tied with Thompson, after trailing by 6 points last month. Baldwin released a poll of her own conducted last week that showed her leading slightly.

The primary left Thompson's war chest depleted, forcing him to put a heavy focus on fundraising. He was off the air for a few weeks and Baldwin spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte - two reasons that could explain the swing in momentum. The Marquette poll's swing is pretty steep (and also shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by a whopping 14 points), but even if the race is closer than it shows, it's clear the contest has tightened.

A race that does not appear to be tightening is the one in Virginia, where former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine has built a lead in two new polls, one from the Washington Post and another from Quinnipiac/NYT/CBS. Kaine leads former senator George Allen (R) by 8 percentage points in the former survey and 7 in the latter. This comes after poll upon poll have shown a neck-and-neck race for much of the cycle.

In Massachusetts, where Sen. Scott Brown (R) seemed to do everything right this summer, four polls released this week showed Democrat Elizabeth Warren holding a slight lead. One pollster characterized the boost in support for Warren as a post-convention bounce.

Two races which are arguably second-tier pickup opportunities for the GOP - Ohio and Florida - appeared to slip further from its grasp last week. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) held a double-digit lead over Rep. Connie Mack (R), an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed, while Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) led Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) by 7 points. The NBC/WSJ/Marist poll also showed a tossup race between Kaine and Allen in Virginia.

It's not all bad news for Republicans. In Maine, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee has spent a six-figures on an ad buy, a new survey from automated pollster Public Policy Polling showed front-running independent former governor Angus King leading by just 8 points over Republican Charlie Summers, a much smaller lead than other surveys have shown.

If the race tightens further, Democratic outside groups will be in a tough spot there. Convinced King would caucus with the party if elected, Democrats have taken a hands-off approach when it comes to the race, all but ignoring Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill. Yet if the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or Majority PAC runs ads for King, Republicans will immediately draw attention to it.

In another New England race once thought to rest firmly in Democratic hands, Republican Linda McMahon is holding her own against Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Obama is likely to carry Connecticut, and if McMahon couldn't win in the 2010 GOP wave year, it's hard to imagine her winning this time. Still, her money and Murphy's recent string of tough headlines about him facing a foreclosure and failing to pay his rent make Connecticut a race to watch.

Republicans must net four seats to win the majority, a task which, while still possible, appears less likely than it once did. But as quickly as Democrats have seized the momentum, the GOP could get it right back.

If embattled Rep. Todd Akin (R) drops out in Missouri before the Sept. 25 deadline, Republicans can replace him and could once again have a good chance at beating Sen. Claire McCaskill (D). If the Maine race tightens, a surefire Democratic pickup may start to look shaky. And if the GOP builds leads in Massachusetts, Nevada and North Dakota, Democrats will have to look to less promising opportunities to make pickups in Indiana and Arizona. And they still have to play a lot of defense.

But those are a lot of ifs. This week at least, Senate Democrats have more to smile about.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



874 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 9:47 PM EST


8 takeaways from the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll;
We pore over the NBC-WSJ poll so you don't have to.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1160 words


The NBC-Wall Street Journal's latest national poll was released late Tuesday, and we spent our night - dork alert! - poring over the results for clues as to how the electorate is thinking about the county and the two men running for president.

Obama led in the head-to-head matchup 50 percent to 45 percent, but we here at The Fix prefer to look at the guts of the poll.

Our eight takeaways from are below. They are in no particular order other than the way we came across them. (You can see the whole questionnaire here if you want to dig through it yourself.)

1. A burst of "right direction" optimism: Nearly four in 10 people said that the country is "headed in the right direction" - the highest that number has been in NBC-WSJ polling since January 2009. By way of comparison, in NBC-WSJ polling in August, July and June the "right direction" number never rose above 32 percent. Important piece of context: A majority of people - 55 percent - still say that things are off on the "wrong track".

2. Obama takes a foreign policy hit: While the poll viewed broadly brings good news for President Obama, one area where he has dipped is on his handling of foreign policy. Fifty-four percent approved of his performance in that area in August, but that number has dipped to 49 percent in the September survey. Disapproval of Obama's foreign policy performance rose from 40 percent in August to 46 percent this month. Those numbers suggest that, while Mitt Romney has taken the brunt of the criticism over his comments on Libya, the ongoing unrest is also doing the incumbent some harm.

3. People l-o-v-e Bill Clinton: The rave reviews for the former President's speech at the Democratic National Convention have sent positive feelings about him through the roof. Thirty-nine percent of those tested said that had a "very positive" feeling toward him, the highest the former president has rated on that question in the history of NBC-WSJ polling. By contrast, 18 percent of people said they had a "very positive" feeling about Romney, while 35 percent said the same of Obama.

4. The "preparedness" question: We have often written that the vote for president is more based on perception and feel than it is one stone cold facts. People want a president who they feel is up to the job of representing the county - both in domestic and international affairs. A near-majority (47 percent) said Obama is "better prepared to lead the country for the next four years," while 36 percent said the same of Romney. That is not insignificant. At all.

5. Economy improving?: In a bounce similar to the "right direction" improvement noted above, 42 percent of people now believe the economy will get better over the next year, an improvement from the 36 percent who said the same just a month ago. That burst of optimism comes not from those who had previously been pessimistic - 18 percent in both the August and September NBC-WSJ poll said the economy would get worse - but rather from movement among those who had previously predicted the status quo (38 percent in August) and now feel more optimistic (32 percent in September).

6. Obama, Romney jump ball on economy: The increased optimism about the future of the economy seems to be benefiting Obama. In August, 43 percent said Romney was better equipped to deal with the economy, while 37 percent chose Obama. In the September survey, each candidate took 43 percent on that question. For Romney to win, he must - repeat MUST - open a lead back up on the ability to best handle the economy.

7. Bain not hurting Romney that badly: Just 15 percent of respondents said that the fact that "the company [Romney] headed cut jobs and sent jobs overseas" was one of their biggest concerns about his candidacy. (Interestingly, though, the Bain attack was the thing that concerned Romney supporters most.) What was their biggest concern? One in five said the fact that Romney has the "wrong positions on abortion, contraception and gay marriage" worried them most.

8. Obama as big spender works: Asked the same question of Obama, three in 10 people said that the fact that the incumbent has "significantly increased federal spending and raised the federal debt" was a major concern to them. That number makes clear that there is absolutely a strategic path for Romney to attack Obama effectively - if he can get himself and his campaign back on message.

Romney borrowed $20 million in August: Romney's campaign is more flush with cash than Obama's, but he was still forced to borrow $20 million in August.

Romney had to borrow the money thanks to an apparent shortage in primary funds. Candidates are only allowed to spend money raised for the general election after they are officially named their party's nominee. That didn't happen for Romney until the end of the month, and in the meantime, Romney has to borrow money.

He retained $15 million of that debt at the end of the month (the report is due by Thursday) and today has $11 million in debt remaining. That debt can only be paid down with money from donors who haven't already contributed the maximum of $2,500 for the primary.

Romney's campaign had $30 million cash on hand at the end of July. When you include the Republican National Committee and a joint fundraising committee between the two, though, he had $185.9 million, compared to $123.7 million for Obama and the Democrats.

Fixbits:

A new AP-GfK poll confirms the findings of the latest Gallup poll, with Obama's convention bounce disappearing and him falling to 47 percent, with Romney at 46 percent.

In a visit with David Letterman on Tuesday, Obama wasn't laughing much and took aim at Romney's "47 percent" comment.

The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is up with a new ad on the "47 percent" comment.

The Romney campaign is up with two new ads on coal.

Romney just got his first intelligence briefing.

Another poll shows Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) gaining in the Wisconsin Senate race.

The Democratic super PAC Majority PAC is up with a new ad against former senator George Allen (R-Va.)

The super PAC that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on former Missouri state treasurer Sarah Steelman's (R) failed Senate primary campaign is now running ads for Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.).

A new automated SurveyUSA poll in Washington shows Snohomish County Councilman John Koster (R) leading Democrat Suzan delBene 46 percent to 42 percent in the race for former congressman Jay Inslee's (D) seat.

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) faces more trouble from the House ethics committee.

Must-reads:

"Thurston Howell Romney" - David Brooks, New York Times

"Romney video shows collapse of private spaces" - Craig A. Timberg and David Nakamura, Washington Post

"Romney faces twofold challenge in getting campaign back on track" - Karen Tumulty, Washington Post

"Wisconsin Offers View of Challenges Confronting Romney" - Jeff Zeleny and Marjorie Connelly, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



875 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 9:04 PM EST


Newt Gingrich to raise money for Todd Akin;
The former speaker of the House is slated to help the embattled congressman raise money next week.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 608 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Romney's '47 percent' comment and the importance of the echo chamber

Senate Democratic candidates look strong in recent polling

How party ID became partisan - and why it shouldn't be

Democrats well-positioned for fall campaign stretch run in Virginia

Why is Mitt Romney borrowing $20 million?

Obama makes more swing state gains

8 takeaways from the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll

People REALLY hate politicians

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: 

* President Obama leads Mitt Romney 52 percent to 44 percent in a new CNN/ORC International poll of likely voters in Michigan.

* Discussion about the economy will dominate the first debate between Obama and Romney on Oct. 3. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced that three of the six 15-minute segments will be dedicated to the economy. The other three will focus on "health care," "the role of government," and "governing," according to the commission.

* With a Sept. 25 deadline to remove his name from the ballot looming, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is showing no signs he's preparing to step aside. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich will attend a fundraiser for the embattled congressman on Monday.

* Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is selling his Washington D.C. townhouse to help pay for the cost of medical bills. Jackson has been on medical leave for three months. He was recently treated for bipolar disorder at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

* Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) is the latest Republican to take issue with Romney's "47 percent" comment. "Keep in mind, I have five brothers and sisters. My father was an auto mechanic. My mother was a school cook. I have a very different view of the world," Heller said. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Connecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon have also said they disagree with what Romney said.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS: 

* In a new congressional campaign ad, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) says, "We need to end the growing government control of the economy." A Wisconsin law has allowed Ryan to run for reelection to the House, even as he runs for vice president. He is expected to cruise to victory over Democrat Rob Zerban, but has millions in his campaign account to spend on House campaign ads, which could also boost the Romney-Ryan ticket in Wisconsin.

* Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) latest TV ad casts Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) as an ally of "big corporations" who supports tax breaks and tax loopholes for outsourcing jobs.

* Former congresswoman Heather Wilson (R) is out with a new negative ad against Rep. Martin Heinrich (D) in the New Mexico Senate race. "Creating jobs, it's just not his thing," the narrator of the ad says about Heinrich. The Democrat appears to have seized the momentum in the race during the last month.

* The Republican National Committee raised $35.6 million in August, and ended the month with $76.6 million in the bank.

* A Benenson Strategy Group survey conducted for the Service Employees International Union and House Majority PAC shows Democrat Bill Enyart leading Republican Jason Plummer 49 percent to 41 percent in the race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Costello (D) in Illinois's 12th District.

THE FIX MIX:

Gangnam Style parodies.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



876 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 8:42 PM EST


Romney's five risky campaign bets;
Mitt Romney has already made a few big bets in his campaign for the White House. Here are five more big, risky bets he's making.


BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson


LENGTH: 1094 words


Mitt Romney has already made a few big bets in his campaign for the White House. He wagered that the summer was more about fundraising than about introducing himself. And in picking Paul Ryan as a running mate, he bet that a bold choice would change the conversation and give him a bounce.

Here are five more big, risky bets Romney is making right now. 1. Clinton is a GOP asset. Who would have imagined that Bill Clinton, not Ronald Reagan, would be the most praised and visible ex-president in Republican ads and talking points? But that's exactly what has happened. And it's odd. (Impeachment? What impeachment?) Even after Clinton's star turn in Charlotte, where he took on Republicans like a folksy prosecutor, Romney is still name-dropping Clinton. A new Romney ad suggests that Clinton is just being "a good soldier" by stumping for Obama. Thead digs up Clinton's 2008 fairy tale comment as if it were 2008. (Hillary Clinton called similar Romney ads that depicted her from 2008 a waste of money). Romney's Clinton argument is hard to figure. It seems to go something like this: "Obama is no Clinton so vote for Romney." (Put that on a bumper sticker right now.) Romney has bet that elevating Clinton would diminish Obama in voter's minds. But then Clinton, who is America's most popular politician, torched Romney and House Republicans, delivering big in Charlotte. Notice the bow followed by a bromance hug? No daylight there. Hard to see how this works out well for Romney.

2. Black voters don't matter that much. Aides to Romney say that he has reached out to African-American voters by visiting a predominantly black charter school in Philadelphia, speaking to the NAACP convention and by forming a sort of "black kitchen cabinet" of advisers and surrogates that include Rep. Allen West (Fla.), Rep. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll. Let's review: Romney was booed at the NAACP. West said that he wants to lead blacks off of the Democratic plantation.(Slavery imagery never a good idea). And how many people, black or white, would recognize Scott or Carroll outside of their respective states? Not many. The campaign has set no goal post for what percentage of the black vote it hopes to get. (They have set it at 38 percent for Latino voters). In some ways, Romney is borrowing from John McCain's playbook by largely ceding the black vote to Obama. (Privately, black Republicans say that Romney isn't making a real play for African-Americans). Yet, with his birther joke, he is likely alienating black voters, something McCain tried to avoid. In contrast, George Bush looked at the 2004 map and saw a pathway to the White House that included African-Americans. In Florida, Bush nearly doubled his support among black voters from 7 percent to 13 percent. In Ohio, he went from 9 percent to 16 percent. In Pennsylvania,16 percent of the black vote went for Bush, up from 7 percent in 2000. In these states, as well as Virginia, blacks will likely make up 10 to 20 percent of the electorate. In short, in swing states, black voters matter. A lot.

3. Bush doesn't matter that much. Bush has largely cooperated with Republican efforts to try and forget his years in the White House. He went back to Texas and has stayed out of politics. (Dick Cheney, not so much). For his part, Romney has dealt with the Bush legacy by barely saying his name. But that's not the same as separation and daylight. Democrats will continue to link Romney to Bush. And voters still blame Bush for the country's economic woes. By simply ignoring Bush, Romney is also ignoring what made Bush (and Clinton and Obama) successful presidential candidates. They all ran as a new brand of politician, distinct from their parties, distinct from the last standard bearer. Clinton went with New Democrat. Bush was a Compassionate Conservative. Obama, young, hip, urban, and African-American, embodied newness. He criticized the Clinton small ball approach and hugged Reagan. (That's all changed, of course). Romney and Paul Ryan have vaguely referred to the Bush era in a mistakes-were-made sort of way. But their main bet is that ignoring Bush will make him go away. Democrats will make sure that doesn't happen

4. Details don't matter that much. In recent interviews, Romney and Ryan were both pressed on providing details about their budgets, specifically what tax loopholes they would close. Ryan said that those details would be hashed out with Congress once they made it to the White House. Romney said something about closing the loopholes on the high end, which is the same as saying nothing at all about closing tax loopholes. On the stump, Romney has tried to be more specific by outlining five steps to get the economy going. But those are largely vague as well. (One step calls for giving people and students the skills and schooling they need to compete in the job market. But how?) On Iran, same thing: Romney says he would stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon by doing exactly what Obama has already done. What would make his approach any different? It's unclear. True, Obama has been light on what a second term would look like. But he has a record that Republicans are happy to point out and are running against. Romney has clearly wagered that details get in the way and would open him up to criticism. (Or in the case of health care, open him up to seeming like a flip-flopper. For certain provisions, then against them.) The problem is he's left Democrats an opening at filling in the blanks.

5. Debates change minds. Romney and his aides have Oct. 3, the date of the first debate, circled in red on their calendar. They see it as a potential game-changer. And in the back of their minds, the Carter-Reagan debate in October 1980 is what they hope to replicate. Carter was up in the polls going into the contest's only debate, which was just a week before Election Day. But Carter lost the debate badly, invoking his daughter Amy in talking about nuclear weapons. And Reagan treated Carter like he barely belonged on stage - "There you go again," was the phrase he used to dismiss Carter. Reagan then closed with the "are you better off" question. Polls showed that viewers judged Reagan to be the clear winner; he went on to trounce Carter. And Romney, who spent last week on debate prep, is hoping for a similar path. But since when is it 1980? In this hyper partisan environment, it's hard to imagine a post-debate poll that will show a clear winner. Besides, debates are like speeches -  overhyped, overanalyzed and rarely game-changers.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



877 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 6:52 PM EST


Democrats well-positioned for fall campaign stretch run in Virginia;
Boosted by strong support from women and a local economy that is in better shape than much of the country, polling shows President Obama has reasons for optimism in the commonwealth. In the Senate race, so does Tim Kaine.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 760 words


Virginia is both a key presidential battleground and the site of an ultra-competitive Senate race that could well decide which party wins the upper chamber majority. In both contests, Democrats appear to hold the high ground with just under seven weeks to go until Election Day.

Beginning with the presidential race, recent polling shows that President Obama is well positioned for the fall stretch run. He leads Mitt Romney 52 percent to 44 percent in a Washington Post poll released Tuesday, and 50 percent to 46 percent in a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/ CBS News poll released on Wednesday. The Real Clear Politics average of recent polling in the state shows Obama with a three-point advantage over Romney.

Drilling down into specific surveys, it's clear that Obama's standing has been boosted by strong support from women.

The Quinnipiac/NYT/CBS poll shows Obama leading clearly among women, 54 percent to 42 percent. It's been enough to overcome deficits among independents (who favor Romney by 11 points in the poll) and men (who favor Romney by six points). In the Washington Post poll, the gap among women is even wider, with Obama leading 58 percent to 39 percent.

Earlier this year, a debate raged over a measure in the state legislature that would have required women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before getting abortions. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) eventually backed off his support for it, and the back-and-forth was seen as a net political loss for Republicans, who were relentlessly targeted by Democrats and women's groups in the ensuing weeks and months.

In addition to the gap among women, polling in Virginia also shows distinct divides along lines of race and religion. "Racial polarization in the presidential election nationally is on display in Virginia, where blacks back the president 93 - 5 percent and whites go for Romney 57 - 39 percent," said Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown. "Looking at the subgroup of evangelical Christians who share similar religious beliefs, the president leads 93 - 6 percent among black evangelicals, while Romney leads among white evangelicals 78 - 17 percent."

It's not as if there has been a sudden shift in support toward Obama in Virginia. The president's four-point advantage in the Quinnipiac/NYT/CBS poll is the same as it was in early August, and Obama's lead among registered voters in the Washington Post poll is identical to what it was in May.

Why has the president been able to hold his advantage, even as GOP-aligned outside groups have begun to meddle more heavily? In addition to strong support from women, another possible explanation is the economy, boosted by the defense industry in the northern part of the state. In July, Virginia's unemployment rate was the 10th lowest in the country, and a couple of points below the national average. In the Washington Post poll, Obama's marks on the economy were better than they were nationally in the latest Washington-Post/ABC News poll.

Over in the Senate race, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine has opened up a lead over former senator George Allen (R) in two new polls. A Washington Post survey released Wednesday shows Kaine leading 51 percent to 43 percent, a departure from previous surveys showing a tighter race. Kaine's support among women has grown since the spring, as has his support from seniors.

The Quinnipiac/NYT/CBS poll showed Kaine leading 51 percent to 44 percent. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed a neck and neck race, which is more in line with most surveys taken during the year.

Kaine has been running a varied rotation of ads targeting different cross-sections of the electorate, including Hispanic voters, women and moderates.

Allen has also tried to raise his appeal among women with his ads, but so far it hasn't appeared to have worked as well as he'd like. Allen has also tried to make inroads on an issue that could resonate in the northern part of the state, which is mainly Democratic territory. He ran an ad this summer vowing to take a stand against automatic defense cuts due to kick in at the beginning of next year.

To be clear, neither Obama nor Kaine has put away the Virginia. Victories by Romney, Allen, or both remain very serious possibilities. But neither Democrat (and the fate of both are closely linked, considering how few crossover votes are expected) should be displeased with his standing at this late stage. And considering how crucial the state is in both the battle of the Senate and the race for the White House, that shouldn't be overlooked.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



878 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 1:02 PM EST


Ad Watch: Obama super PAC puts leaked Romney comments in ad;
Short summary of story


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 67 words


Priorities USA, "Doors"

What it says: "Victims?  Behind these doors middle-class families struggle ... Mitt Romney will never convince us he's on our side."

What it means: Did you hear that clip from that Mitt Romney fundraiser? No? Well, let's play it again. 

Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



879 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 19, 2012 Wednesday 1:02 PM EST


Ad Watch: Romney targets coal vote;
Obama and Romney fight for coal votes.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 73 words


Mitt Romney, "Way of Life" and "War on Coal"

What it says: "Obama's ruining the coal industry." What it means: I'm pro-coal, Obama hates coal. If you work in coal you should vote for me. (Both candidates are fighting for the coal vote.) Who will see it: The campaign didn't say; according to a Republican media buyer Romney's latest ad buy was in Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



880 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Limits Placed On Immigrants In Health Law


BYLINE: By ROBERT PEAR


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1282 words


WASHINGTON -- The White House has ruled that young immigrants who will be allowed to stay in the United States as part of a new federal policy will not be eligible for health insurance coverage under President Obama's health care overhaul.

The decision -- disclosed last month, to little notice -- has infuriated many advocates for Hispanic Americans and immigrants. They say the restrictions are at odds with Mr. Obama's recent praise of the young immigrants.

In June, the president announced that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, attended school here and met other requirements would be allowed to remain in the country without fear of deportation.

Immigrants granted such relief would ordinarily meet the definition of ''lawfully present'' residents, making them eligible for government subsidies to buy private insurance, a central part of the new health care law. But the administration issued a rule in late August that specifically excluded the young immigrants from the definition of ''lawfully present.''

At the same time, in a letter to state health officials, the administration said that young immigrants granted a reprieve from deportation ''shall not be eligible'' for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. Administration officials said they viewed the immigration initiative and health coverage as separate matters.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said in the Federal Register that the reasons offered for the immigration initiative ''do not pertain to eligibility for Medicaid,'' the children's health program or federal subsidies for buying private health insurance.

Nick Papas, a White House spokesman, said the deferred-deportation policy ''was never intended'' to confer eligibility for federal health benefits. The White House describes that policy as ''an exercise of prosecutorial discretion,'' allowing law enforcement officers to focus on immigrants who pose a threat to national security or public safety. Administration officials declined to elaborate as to why beneficiaries of the new immigration policy were ineligible for coverage under the new health law.

The move might help Mr. Obama avoid a heated political debate over whether the health law is benefiting illegal immigrants. The possibility of such benefits has drawn criticism from many Republicans, including Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who shouted ''You lie!'' as Mr. Obama addressed the issue before a joint session of Congress in 2009.

The restrictions on health coverage may also save money by limiting the number of people who receive health insurance wholly or partly from the federal government. Federal subsidies for insurance under the new health care law are expected to average $5,300 a year for each person subsidized in 2014, and the cost is expected to rise to $7,500 a person in 2022, the Congressional Budget Office says.

Several immigration lawyers and health policy experts have criticized the restrictions, saying they will make it more difficult to achieve the goals of the health law and the immigration initiative, which Democrats consider two of Mr. Obama's most significant achievements.

Jennifer M. Ng'andu, a health policy specialist at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic rights group, said: ''We do not understand why the administration decided to do this. It's providing immigration relief to children and young adults so they can be fully integrated into society. At the same time, it's shutting them out of the health care system so they cannot become productive members of society.''

Ricardo E. Campos, 23, of Wheaton, Md., an illegal immigrant who came to the United States from El Salvador at the age of 12, applied for the deferred-enforcement program two weeks ago with help from a community organization, Casa de Maryland.

He is attending a community college and said he desperately needs affordable health insurance. After doctors discovered that he had bone cancer, he underwent a 36-hour operation in 2009 and was in a wheelchair for a year.

''I want to become a doctor, in internal medicine or oncology, so I can save lives just as my life was saved,'' Mr. Campos said.

''What if one day the cancer comes back and I don't have health insurance? That's scary.'' (Just before his surgery, Mr. Campos got coverage through a state-sponsored plan with high premiums, after commercial insurers had turned him down.)

Under the new federal health law, insurance subsidies are available not only to citizens, but also to low-income immigrants ''lawfully present'' in the United States. That group will still include green card holders and people granted asylum.

The Pew Research Center estimates that up to 1.7 million unauthorized immigrants could eventually seek deferrals of deportation under the exercise of executive authority announced in June by Mr. Obama. Those immigrants will continue to be able to receive health insurance from employers, but many are likely to struggle to obtain coverage if they do not have a job that provides it.

In the absence of a significant change in immigration law, young immigrants granted temporary relief from deportation have no clear path to green cards or citizenship.

When he announced the new immigration policy in June, Mr. Obama hailed the patriotism and promise of young ''dreamers'' -- illegal immigrants who could have gained legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act, which has been bottled up in Congress for 11 years. Mr. Obama said the young immigrants were Americans at heart and should be able to work legally and live openly in this country without fear of being expelled.

Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group for low-income immigrants, said: ''We had been working closely with the administration, so we were quite surprised and shocked by the new restrictions on health coverage. This is a shortsighted, reactionary and bad public policy.''

Republicans in Congress have criticized the deportation deferrals as a form of backdoor amnesty for immigrants who broke the law by entering the United States illegally or by overstaying visas. They say Mr. Obama does not have the legal authority to do what he did -- a claim also made in a lawsuit by 10 immigration law enforcement officers who are challenging the policy in Federal District Court.

The politics of the issue cut in several directions. The Gallup tracking poll shows Mr. Obama with a wide lead over his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, among Hispanic voters. At the same time, administration officials have tried to avoid alienating swing voters who are concerned about illegal immigration, and they have emphasized steps taken to secure the borders.

In the primary campaign, Mr. Romney said he would veto the Dream Act because it could create a magnet for illegal immigration. Ryan M. Williams, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said Mr. Obama's deferred-deportation policy had ''ruined an effort in Congress to forge a bipartisan long-term solution'' for illegal immigrants brought here as children.

Some immigrants and their allies worry that the restrictions on federal health benefits could be used to justify similar actions by state officials. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, has issued an executive order denying driver's licenses and public benefits to young immigrants who are granted relief from deportation.

PHOTOS: Jennifer M. Ng'andu, a health policy specialist at the National Council of La Raza, and Ricardo E. Campos, 23, a student in Maryland, are dismayed at the White House's decision on health care. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUKE SHARRETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A12)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/health/policy/limits-placed-on-immigrants-in-health-care-law.html


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



881 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


In Car Country, Obama Trumpets China Trade Case


BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER; Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Michael Barbaro from Los Angeles.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1239 words


CINCINNATI -- In a vivid display of the powers of incumbency, President Obama on Monday filed a broad new trade case against China at the World Trade Organization, announcing the action in this industrial battleground where Mitt Romney has pressed his argument that the president has not done enough to protect American workers.

Administration officials said that the W.T.O. case, which charges China with unfairly subsidizing exports of cars and auto parts, was months in the making. But the timing, eight weeks before the election and days after Mr. Romney had renewed his attacks on Mr. Obama for his trade policy toward China, gives it potent political resonance.

On a day in which security and trade policy were inextricably mixed with the presidential campaign, the Chinese government, hours after word of the American action began circulating in Beijing, announced that it was filing its own W.T.O. case, alleging unfairness in how the United States calculates the penalty tariffs in anti-subsidy cases.

The timing appeared to be coincidental. But an announcement earlier in the day that the United States and Japan had reached a major agreement to deploy a second advanced missile-defense radar on Japanese territory prompted immediate criticism in China.

Speaking to supporters in a state heavily dependent on the auto industry, Mr. Obama drew an explicit link between China's trade policies and the economic travails of voters in this closely contested region. By giving its exporters $1 billion in illegal subsidies from 2009 to 2011, the administration said, China is hurting American manufacturers and encouraging companies to move their production to China.

''These are subsidies that directly harm working men and women on the assembly lines in Ohio and Michigan and across the Midwest,'' Mr. Obama said at rally in a hillside park here. ''It's not right; it's against the rules, and we will not let it stand.''

After a week of anti-American violence in the Middle East that threw Mr. Romney off stride and left Mr. Obama potentially vulnerable to criticism, the focus on China put the candidates back on familiar ground, with a reliably populist theme that allowed each to try out new lines showcasing their toughness and caricaturing the fecklessness of the other.

Mr. Romney has long said he would be tougher on China than Mr. Obama. He responded on Monday to the W.T.O. action by declaring that Mr. Obama had done ''too little, too late'' to curb China's unfair trade practices. The latest case, he said, was little more than a political stunt, failing to compensate for the Obama administration's refusal to take other actions, like labeling China a currency manipulator.

''The president may think that announcing new trade lawsuits less than two months from the election will distract from his record,'' Mr. Romney said in Los Angeles. ''But American businesses and workers struggling on an uneven playing field know better.''

Mr. Obama repeated his charge that it was Mr. Romney who had sent jobs to China through his zealous practice of ''outsourcing'' at Bain Capital. Mr. Romney, he said, also profited from investments in Chinese companies. ''Ohio,'' the president declared, ''you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs.''

The new trade case is further evidence of how Mr. Obama, after early attempts at accommodation with Beijing, has stiffened his approach to China. It was the ninth trade action that the administration has brought against China, with the highest profile ones coming this year.

The administration's timing, however, hardly appeared accidental. It was the second China trade action announced by Mr. Obama on the eve of a campaign visit to Ohio, where the auto-parts industry employs 52,400 people. Last July, just before he flew to Toledo, home of a Jeep Wrangler factory, the White House filed a complaint against Beijing for levying $3.3 billion of duties on American automobiles.

''It's not as if because we're in the midst of an election that we should wait until next year to take these steps on behalf of American workers,'' Joshua Earnest, the deputy press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One.

The United States trade representative, Ron Kirk, said his staff had been investigating China's auto subsidies for ''quite a while,'' adding in a conference call, ''We have no knowledge of the president's travel schedule.'' He said the United States would vigorously defend itself from the Chinese case on antitariff penalties.

The Obama and Romney campaigns are amplifying their remarks in tit-for-tat political advertising that focuses on China -- Mr. Romney's accusing the president of repeatedly passing up chances to get tough on Beijing; Mr. Obama's asking incredulously, ''Mitt Romney tough on China?'' and reciting the charges of outsourcing and investments in Chinese companies.

Bashing China is a tried-and-true campaign strategy for both parties, particularly in swing states like Ohio, where a heavy loss of manufacturing jobs has coincided with a surge of Chinese-made auto parts into the United States.

But for Mr. Obama it is a notable shift from 2008, when he modulated any anti-China talk, in part because jobs were not as central an issue then and in part because his foreign-policy advisers warned him that if he made China a punching bag, he would spend his first year as president repairing the damage.

Once in office, however, aides said Mr. Obama became frustrated by what he views as China's refusal to play by the rules. In the fall of 2009, he imposed a tariff on China for dumping tires into the American market. This was the most conspicuous of a stream of trade actions, covering goods from a specific category of flat-rolled steel to chicken broilers.

''We've brought more trade cases against China in one term than the previous administration did in two -- and every case we've brought that's been decided, we won,'' Mr. Obama said, noting that Mr. Romney warned that the tire case would be bad for American workers. The president claimed it created more than 1,000 jobs.

Mr. Romney is emphasizing another type of trade enforcement in which he says Mr. Obama is lacking: labeling China a currency manipulator for keeping its currency artificially undervalued. In his campaign ad, a narrator says: ''Seven times Obama could have stopped China's cheating. Seven times he refused.''

The Treasury Department has consistently declined to designate China for manipulation. Senior officials argue that to do so would only make matters worse by provoking a nationalist backlash that could lead the Chinese authorities to tighten their controls again. They note that after persistent pressure by American officials, China began relaxing the renminbi in 2010, and it has risen modestly against the dollar.

Mr. Romney, however, has declared he would label China a manipulator on his first day in office -- a threat that rattles free-trade proponents. Mr. Romney also says he would be tougher than Mr. Obama on issues like intellectual property rights.

''If I had known that all it took to get him to take action was to run an ad citing his inaction on China's cheating, I would have run one a long time ago,'' Mr. Romney said to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

PHOTO: President Obama announced the case Monday in Cincinnati. Aides have defended the timing, with the election two months away. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A9)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/us/politics/in-car-country-obama-trumpets-china-trade-case.html


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



882 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


On a Challenging Day, Romney Seeks to Shift to His Policy Specifics


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and ASHLEY PARKER; Michael Barbaro, Michael D. Shear and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 1142 words


An effort by Mitt Romney to give his campaign new direction -- built around new ads intended to highlight how a Romney presidency would take the nation on a better course than President Obama -- was quickly overshadowed on Monday by the video of Mr. Romney's unscripted remarks at a fund-raiser several months ago.

The attention paid to the video -- in which he described nearly half of Americans as having a victim mentality and a dependency on government -- further complicated Mr. Romney's efforts to bring a sharper focus to his campaign and address tensions within his staff.

And a day that began with hope by his campaign that it would be back on the offensive after a couple of weeks largely spent on defense ended with a late-night news briefing where he said his comments, surreptitiously recorded and presented by the Web site of Mother Jones, were inelegantly stated.

Earlier, Mr. Romney's aides unveiled an advertising drive intended to address a sense among undecided voters that they do not have a clear idea of where he would take the country if elected. With just seven weeks until Election Day, it was an abrupt shift from a strategy that until now had been focused almost entirely on criticizing Mr. Obama and, in particular, the president's handling of the economy.

Speaking directly into the camera in one of his commercials, Mr. Romney says, ''My plan is to help the middle class,'' and then goes on to list in broad strokes his plan to ''cut the deficit,'' ''crack down'' on China and ''champion small business.''

Many conservative leaders have been pressing Mr. Romney to be more specific about his policies, saying the campaign needs to provide a sharper contrast to Mr. Obama and set out a governing agenda. If the ad did not fill in all of the blanks in Mr. Romney's proposals, it did address what was becoming a crescendo of calls from supporters, donors and even some on Mr. Romney's own staff for what has become a new mantra, ''More Mitt.''

Aides said that recent polling done by the campaign suggested that voters were increasingly tuning in to the campaign now and were eager to hear more from Mr. Romney about his plans. In a conference call with reporters, Ed Gillespie, a senior strategist, said, ''We are not rolling out new policy so much as we are making sure people understand that when we say we can do these things, here's how we are going to get them done and these are the specifics.''

The new ad campaign, which also includes a spot criticizing Mr. Obama's economic record for average families, was intended to help put the Romney campaign back on a forward footing after a rocky two weeks following the Republican convention. But the video threatened to upend that effort.

The Romney team was hit with the disclosure of the video just hours after introducing the ads. The video showed Mr. Romney speaking candidly with donors at a fund-raising event, saying that 47 percent of voters, Mr. Obama's supporters, consider themselves ''victims,'' pay no income taxes and are therefore unresponsive to his low-tax message.

The video also showed him talking about how his best shot at winning over people who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and are now undecided is not with partisan rhetoric but with language that empathizes with their disappointment in the president's performance.

The campaign was still seeking to get beyond a public airing of internal differences that appeared Sunday in Politico, in which several campaign advisers, speaking mostly on the condition of anonymity, complained about the domineering style of Mr. Romney's chief strategist, Stuart Stevens.

In an interview with Telemundo, Mr. Romney dismissed the discussion of frustration within his campaign. ''I've got a terrific campaign,'' he said. ''My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well with them. Our campaign is doing well.''

The Romney campaign dismissed the idea that complaints about Mr. Stevens's management style -- and exceptionally broad portfolio -- had led to an increased role for Mr. Gillespie, a former Republican Party chairman and counselor to President George W. Bush, who moved to the campaign full time several weeks ago. One aide, who would discuss campaign personnel issues only on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Gillespie was there not ''instead of'' Mr. Stevens but ''in addition to'' him, allowing him to focus more time on his most pressing responsibilities.

In interviews, several people involved in the campaign said that Mr. Gillespie was bringing a new sense of order and organization to the campaign, which was serving as an antidote to the more free-flowing style of Mr. Stevens, a longtime political advertising strategist with a creative bent, a proclivity to philosophize and no aversion to late-night phone calls or strategy sessions. (His response when aides pointed out that some of the team might be sleeping: Wake them up.)

Implicit in these descriptions of Mr. Gillespie was the notion that the campaign had been lacking the organizational approach he was bringing, though others said growing pains are natural as a campaign moves from the primaries into a general election battle, when staff grows exponentially.

The criticism against the campaign had been steadily escalating since the Republican convention, and quiet griping about Mr. Stevens was spilling outside the walls of the headquarters. Republicans said they were watching closely to see what Mr. Romney would do in the wake of the complaints that were first exposed in the Politico article.

Some Republicans close to the campaign said they hoped the concerns had reached Mr. Romney, who has come to trust Mr. Stevens's counsel even when it has conflicted with that of other friends and family.

For instance, when Mr. Romney's family and longtime friends urged him to focus more on his personal life -- including his Mormon faith -- rather than his career, Mr. Romney's response was clear and unwavering: ''I trust Stuart,'' he said, implying that they should, too.

Mr. Stevens was adamant that the campaign focus intently on the economy and his business experience. That seemed to rankle some donors.

Just a few days ago, attendees at a major fund-raiser in New York City watched a biographical video about Mr. Romney that was first played at the Republican convention, but not during prime-time network coverage.

''Why aren't they showing that video more?'' contributors asked, recalled Anthony Scaramucci, a major Romney fund-raiser.

The campaign is hoping that the latest ad with Mr. Romney discussing his vision for governing will begin allaying some of those complaints -- and, more important, quench undecided voters' thirst for more information about him.

PHOTO: Mitt Romney speaking Monday at the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce convention in Los Angeles. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/us/politics/after-a-rocky-few-weeks-romney-shifts-strategy-to-policy-specifics.html


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



883 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Inside the Times


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 2


LENGTH: 1007 words


International

CZECHS SEE LETHAL PERIL

IN A BOOTLEG BOTTLE

The Czech Republic banned the sale of liquor containing 20 percent or higher alcohol content after at least 20 people died and dozens of others were seriously injured by methanol-tainted spirits. PAGE A4

SYRIAN CIVILIANS BATTERED

With the Syrian conflict reported to be spilling into the Lebanese border area, United Nations investigators said civilians were bearing the brunt of indiscriminate air and ground assaults. PAGE A6

POLICE CONTAIN AFGHAN RAGE

Facing Afghanistan's first significant outbreak of violence over an anti-Islam film, the police moved swiftly to keep rampaging groups of young men from advancing toward Kabul. PAGE A6

ASIA TENSIONS ESCALATE

Tensions escalated between China and the United States and its Asian allies as several Chinese experts criticized a major agreement by the United States and Japan to deploy an advanced missile-defense radar. PAGE A8

THAI TRUTH COMMISSION

A panel investigating deadly protests in Thailand two years ago blamed the powerful Thai military and a shadowy group of militants known as the black shirts, and warned of further risks for violence. PAGE A9

MYANMAR FREES PRISONERS

Myanmar's government said that it was releasing more than 500 prisoners, the latest in a series of amnesties by President Thein Sein's administration. PAGE A10

PALESTINIAN FINANCIAL STRAIN

As the Palestinian Authority marks the 19th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, it is facing a financial crisis that experts say could threaten its future stability. PAGE A10

RESTORING HITLER'S LAIR

For nearly three years, Hitler commanded the Third Reich from a network of bunkers and buildings in the Polish forest called the Wolf's Lair. Now, the Polish government has decided that the encampment should be transformed into a historical destination. PAGE A10

National

AD BUY BETS ON ROMNEY

IN MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN

Despite a bad run in recent polls, Mitt Romney still has supporters who are bullish about his chances in some states that President Obama won handily in 2008, with Restore Our Future, a ''super PAC'' that supports Mr. Romney, investing $1.5 million in ads in Michigan and Wisconsin. PAGE A11

U.S. APPEALS RULING

The Obama administration warned that a judge's ruling blocking a statute authorizing the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects has jeopardized its ability to continue detaining certain prisoners captured during the war in Afghanistan. PAGE A14

PLEASE TEXT DURING SERVICE

At a service at the Jewish Museum of Florida, organizers were trying an innovation that few if any rabbis have embraced: using the language of the tech generation instead of the Torah to keep the crowd of 20- to 30-year-olds connected to their Jewish roots and to each other. PAGE A16

New York

SMASHER OF ATOMS

IS SQUEEZED INTO MUSEUM

A cyclotron used in the Manhattan Project was moved into the New-York Historical Society for an exhibition on New York's role in World War II. PAGE A18

FEARLESS OFFICIAL ON TWITTER

The chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is unfettered compared with most public officials on Twitter, who usually have a team operating their account. PAGE A19

Obituaries

LOUIS SIMPSON, 89

Mr. Simpson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who told characteristically American tales of common people and often cast a skeptical eye on the American dream. PAGE A17

RUSSELL E. TRAIN, 92

Mr. Train played a central role in creating sound law and effective enforcement in response to rising concerns about environmental protection in America. PAGE A17

Business

ONLINE SOURCE OF FUNDS

PRESSURES ENTREPRENEURS

Crowdfunding is a popular and lucrative source of money for entrepreneurs, but getting the money is sometimes the easy part. They then have to turn their dreams into reality, with a crowd keeping an eye on their progress. PAGE B1

RESTLESSNESS IN GREECE

Public opposition to austerity budgets deepened in Greece, as judges stopped working and doctors went on strike in a prelude to a general strike called by the country's main labor unions. PAGE B3

A TRAVELER'S RISK TOLERANCE

Even as travel is becoming more of a hassle, a book about crimes on Interstate highways might make one think twice about driving. Chris Gash, On the Road. PAGE B6

Sports

PATRIOTS' LOSS REVEALS

A STRUGGLING OFFENSE

The Patriots' ineffectiveness without tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was lost to injury, and the diminished role of Wes Welker show an offense in transition. PAGE B11

TOP AMATEUR IN NO RUSH

Lydia Ko, 15, of New Zealand, the leading amateur at the Women's British Open, said she would like to play amateur golf for a couple of years. Karen Crouse, On Golf. PAGE B13

Arts

SUDDENLY THERE CAME

A CLAPPING FOR A POET

The last distraught days of Edgar Allan Poe are charted with spellbinding vitality in ''Red-Eye to Havre de Grace,'' a highlight at this year's Live Arts Festival. Theater Review, Charles Isherwood. PAGE C1

REALITY SHOWS SEEK STARS

Years from now, Christina Aguilera will be remembered for her glamour and her voice. But she should also be remembered as the person who almost single-handedly reshaped music-competition reality programming. Critic's Notebook. PAGE C1

Science

NEW DICTIONARY TRANSLATES

ANCIENT EGYPTIANS' LIVES

The first dictionary of Demotic Egyptian, a language that common people actually spoke in ancient Egypt while the pharaohs were drawing their hieroglyphics, has just been completed. PAGE D1

THINNER MAY MEAN SICKER

A slow but steady accumulation of evidence is inspiring some experts to re-examine assumptions about the association between body fat and chronic disease. PAGE D2

DEBATE OVER FOREST FIRES

Scientists are at loggerheads over whether there is an ecological advantage to thinning forests and using prescribed fire to reduce fuel for subsequent fires -- or whether those methods actually diminish ecological processes and biodiversity. PAGE D2

CRACKING A MATH RIDDLE

A mathematician has released 500 pages of work on a problem known as the abc conjecture, but much of it is not fully comprehensible to many others in the field. PAGE D3

Op-Ed

Joe Nocera PAGE A21


URL:


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



884 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


'Super PAC' Places $1.5 Million Bet on Romney in Michigan and Wisconsin


BYLINE: By SARAH WHEATON


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; THE CAUCUS; Pg. 11


LENGTH: 391 words


Mitt Romney may have had a bad run in polls in recent weeks, but he still has supporters who are bullish about his chances in some states that President Obama won handily in 2008.

Restore Our Future, the "super PAC" supporting Mr. Romney, is investing $1.5 million on ads in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to a media buyer who monitors spending in battleground states.

The investment suggests that for all the advantages Mr. Obama has had coming out of the nominating conventions, Mr. Romney can rely on one clear advantage he has over Democrats: outside groups with much more money to spend supporting his candidacy and tactically placing their bets in states where they believe he has a chance to win.

Restore Our Future's $720,000 investment in Michigan is particularly remarkable. Mr. Romney's campaign and his other allies seem to have all but given up on the state, even though the candidate grew up there and his father, George Romney, was once governor. The Romney campaign itself, which is running state-specific spots in those states it ostensibly considers to be the most in play, left Michigan off that list.

Other outside groups that back Mr. Romney, including American Crossroads, have also stopped advertising in Michigan.

Despite Mr. Romney's ties to the state, he has struggled to get beyond his opposition to the auto bailout, and election forecasters widely view the state as likely to go for Mr. Obama, who won in Michigan by 16 percentage points in 2008.

A spokeswoman for Restore Our Future declined to comment, saying the super PAC does not address ad purchases that have not been finalized. But the ability of super PACs to raise and spend freely gives them flexibility to invest in some long shots. And it could also provoke the Obama campaign to spend some precious ad dollars on a state it considers relatively safe.

In Wisconsin, Restore Our Future's ad purchase of $820,000, according to the buyer, is an amplification of the Romney campaign's efforts. After initially investing in eight states after the convention, the Romney camp bought ad time in a ninth, Wisconsin, to much fanfare. The campaign believes the selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan, from Wisconsin, as Mr. Romney's running mate has improved the ticket's chances there.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.


URL: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/super-pac-makes-some-intriguing-bets-on-romney/


LOAD-DATE: September 27, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



885 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 18, 2012 Tuesday


New Romney Ad Targets Women


BYLINE: JIM RUTENBERG


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 143 words



HIGHLIGHT: Called "Dear Daughter,'' the ad features imagery of a woman holding a newborn as the narrator ticks through the many ways the Romney campaign says "Obama's policies are making it harder on women."


As Mitt Romney's presidential campaign was consumed once again by events out of its control - the release of Mr. Romney's blunt discussion with donors in May - it was seeking to at least remain focused in the one place on TV where it has ultimate control of what is on screen: Its television advertising.

And this morning, the campaign released a new ad aimed at winning over women - among whom President Obama holds a considerable lead. Called "Dear Daughter,'' it features imagery of a woman holding a newborn as the narrator ticks through ways the Romney campaign says "Obama's policies are making it harder on women."

"The poverty rate for women - the highest in 17 years. More women are unemployed under President Obama," the voice-over says. "More than 5.5 million women can't find work. That's what Obama's policies have done for women. Welcome, daughter."


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



886 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 18, 2012 Tuesday


Dust-Up Over Ad in Kentucky House Race Featuring Executive Dressed as Miner


BYLINE: JOHN ELIGON


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 613 words



HIGHLIGHT: The man dressed as a miner in the ad for Republican Andy Barr is a coal company executive who has contributed thousands of dollars to politicians, mostly Republicans, and has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mitt Romney at fund-raising events.


The man wearing a hard hat and jean overalls draped over a neon green T-shirt has his arms folded and stares sternly into the camera. Standing on a graveled railroad track, he speaks bluntly of the decline of the coal industry as images of Ravenna, Ky., flash across the screen. The blame, he says, is with President Obama, Representative Ben Chandler, a Democrat from Kentucky, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

This latest television ad from Andy Barr, the Lexington lawyer running as a Republican to unseat Mr. Chandler, has drawn sharp criticism from the incumbent - in large part because the man dressed as a coal miner is a coal company executive who has contributed thousands of dollars to politicians, mostly Republicans, and has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mitt Romney and Karl Rove at fund-raising events. The executive, Heath Lovell, vice president of River View Coal, does not live in Ravenna or anywhere in the district Mr. Barr is running for.

"His ad is not only shamefully deceptive, but it's an insult to hard-working Kentucky coal miners who put their lives on the line every day to power our communities and our economy," Eric Nagy, Mr. Chandler's campaign manager, said in a statement. "Ben Chandler has a long history of fighting to protect coal jobs and ensure the safety of coal miners, and Barr should be ashamed to use a corporate shill to suggest otherwise."

Mr. Lovell and Mr. Barr's campaign pushed back forcefully, saying that Mr. Lovell started working in coal mines as a teenager and worked his way up to become an executive. Mr. Lovell said his father and grandfather worked in coal mines. He still goes into the mine he manages every week, Mr. Lovell said.

"That was my hard hat in the video," he said. "That was not some costume that I've put on."

David Host, a spokesman for Mr. Barr, said the idea for the ad was conceived during a jobs tour in the spring in which residents of Ravenna told the candidate that their town was once a thriving railroad hub that transported coal, but much of that industry has since vanished. Mr. Barr has blamed that on what his campaign describes as burdensome regulations put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency, backed by Mr. Obama and Mr. Chandler.

Even though Mr. Lovell was not from the area, he was speaking of problems the coal industry faces statewide that he sees firsthand, Mr. Host said.

"What he has to say accurately reflects the sentiments of miners in his mine and across Kentucky, about the war on coal," Mr. Host said. "They're concerned about their future, about their jobs. That certainly is something that the ad brings across."

Mr. Chandler's campaign argues that he has been an important ally of the mining industry, advocating for the safety and rights of miners and speaking out against overreaching regulations.

In the ad, Mr. Lovell stands in front of another man dressed in miner's clothing.

"Devastating," he says. "Four, five, six a day. Northbound. Southbound. Full rails, full of coal. Now near nothing." He goes on to say that Mr. Obama, Mr. Chandler and the E.P.A. "are destroying us."

"They're putting the coal industry out of business, and it's just devastating," he adds. "This is our way of life."

Mr. Lovell and his wife, Lori, have donated $21,400 to candidates for federal office over the past two years including to Mr. Romney and Rand Paul. Mr. Lovell was at a fund-raiser at the home of the founder of Papa John's Pizza, according to pictures on his wife's Facebook page, one of which showed him making a pizza with Mr. Romney.

"Heath and Mitt Romney," Mr. Lovell's wife wrote about the picture. "I am pretty sure this was the greatest day of Heath's life!"


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



887 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)


September 18, 2012 Tuesday


Obama, on Letterman Show, Responds to Romney Comments


BYLINE: BILL CARTER


SECTION: BUSINESS; media


LENGTH: 366 words



HIGHLIGHT: The president told the "Late Show" audience that Mr. Romney was "writing off a big chunk of the country."


President Obama got his first chance to address the firestorm over Mitt Romney's comments about 47 percent of the electorate being victims who don't have a sense of personal responsibility Tuesday night in a scheduled appearance on David Letterman's late-night show on CBS.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Romney was wrong to categorize nearly half of Americans as people who saw themselves as victims and that he was "writing off a big chunk of the country" by his statement, which was made at a fund-raiser last May.

Mr. Letterman did note that Mr. Obama made a similar gaffe in the 2008 campaign when he was caught on tape saying that voters in Pennsylvania retreated to their "guns and their religion." Mr. Obama told Mr. Letterman that he had recognized that as a mistake and quickly apologized for it.

He also emphasized that he had sought to reassure the 47 percent of Americans who voted for John McCain in 2008 that he would be their president as well.

The two men also addressed the economy - Mr. Letterman said he still wanted to blame somebody and asked whether it could be Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. - and the recent attacks on American diplomatic personnel and property in the Middle East.

Mr. Obama, who was the only guest on Tuesday's "Late Show With David Letterman," received an enthusiastic greeting from the Letterman audience, who gave him a standing ovation as he walked onto the stage.

Mr. Letterman got an immediate laugh by noting the empty spot next to the president and asking: "Is there anything you want to say to the empty chair?" (That of course referred to Clint Eastwood's speech at the Republican convention, when he spoke to an imaginary Mr. Obama in an empty chair.)

Mr. Obama got a big laugh as well after a discussion of how much in shape each man looked. Mr. Letterman said, "You haven't seen me naked."

Mr. Obama said, "We're going to keep it that way."



LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



888 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION


A positive ad vows to add 12M jobs


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, @USATMoore, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 7A


LENGTH: 458 words


The Romney campaign focuses on its own economic plan rather than the Obama record in this positive ad, narrated by Romney himself. The campaign wouldn't say where the ad will run -- but analyses of ad spending show the campaign is focusing its effort on swing states including Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Script

Mitt Romney: "My plan is to help the middle class. Trade has to work for America. That means crack down on cheaters like China. It means open up new markets. Next, got to balance the budget. You've got to cut the deficit. You've got to stop spending more money than we take in.

"And finally, champion small business. Have tax policies, regulations and health care policies that help small business. We put those in place, we'll add 12 million new jobs in four years."

Visuals

The ad shows Romney talking while looking off camera, and cuts to scenes of shipyard cranes, Romney walking through a warehouse with a group of men, money being printed, a woman putting out an "Open" sign on a shop, a woman working as a baker, a woman working in a machinery design studio.

Analysis

Two ads released Monday by the Romney campaign try to turn the campaign conversation to the economy, after a week focused on foreign policy because of the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya. In this ad, Romney talks about his economic proposals, though not with many details, and makes a specific promise to create 12 million jobs:

Trade: Romney told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Monday he would initiate new trade agreements with Latin America.

Budget: Romney says his proposals for tax cuts and spending cuts are supposed to balance the budget in eight to 10 years.

Spending: Romney has said he will cut federal spending to 20% of gross domestic product, down from the current 23%. He hasn't outlined exactly what he will cut, although he has indicated that the Department of Housing and Urban Development may be a target. To offset his proposed tax cuts, Romney says he will eliminate unspecified tax deductions. On Monday, Romney also said he would cut the size of the federal workforce by 10%.

Small business: Romney's tax proposal would cut corporate taxes from 35% to 25%. Romney regularly mentions burdensome regulation on small businesses but has not been specific about what he would change other than promising to "repeal and replace" the Obama health care legislation.

Economic forecasters vary on job growth predictions: The Congressional Budget Office predicts employment growth of 9 million jobs by 2016, but Moody's Analytics, an economic research firm, forecasts growth of 12 million jobs. So it's hard to tell whether Romney's promise to create 12 million jobs is a bold pledge or a plan to take credit for what may happen anyway.


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



889 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 10:10 PM EST


Scott Brown disagrees with Mitt Romney's '47 percent' comments;
The Massachusetts Republican says he does not approve of the GOP presidential nominee's comments at a May fundraiser.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 521 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

Caption Contest winners: So Joe Biden says to a biker

Gallup: Obama's convention bounce is basically gone

The branding of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

The Fix's interactive governor's race map shows GOP opportunity

5 ways Mitt Romney can (still) turn the 2012 race around

Who, again, is Joe Ricketts?

Mitt Romney's "47 percent" problem - in 2 maps

Can Democrat Joe Donnelly win the Indiana Senate race?

A post-convention bounce for Elizabeth Warren?

President Obama's real opponent in 2012

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* In an interview with Fox News, Mitt Romney defended his comments at a May fundraiser about 47 percent of the electorate believes "that they are victims" and will vote for President Obama "no matter what." Romney told Fox: "We were of course talking about a campaign and how he was going to get close to half the vote, I am going to get half the vote, approximately. I hope I am going to get 50.1 percent or more."

* Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) joined Connecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon in adopting a stance against Romney's "47 percent" comment. "That's not the way I view the world. As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in. Too many people today who want to work are being forced into public assistance for lack of jobs," Brown said.

* In Virginia, Obama leads Romney, 52 percent to 44 percent in the latest Washington Post poll.

* A Web site designed to tout Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Mo.) female support has backfired. The site included a picture of Akin with three women, one of whom was a Democratic tracker who was with Akin to monitor his activities.

* Sen. Orrin Hatch's (R-Utah) Democratic opponent said in a fundraising letter that Hatch "is not a bad guy. But he is an old guy," and that he could "die before his term is through."

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* A new TV ad from Rep. Jeff Flake (R) reminds viewers that Obama recruited former surgeon general Richard Carmona (D) into the race. "Jeff Flake is supported by Jon Kyl and John McCain," the narrator of the ad says.

* The Democratic Senatorial Campaign has released a new TV ad in the Indiana Senate race that says Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) has "radical ideas," while a new National Republican Senatorial Committee ad ties Rep. Joe Donnelly (D) to the "Obama-Pelosi" agenda.

* The Republican Governors Association is up with a new TV ad casting former congressman Jay Inslee (D) as unfriendly to small businesses.

* An internal poll conducted Sept. 9-12 for Democrat Charlie Wilson's campaign shows him tied at 46 percent against Rep. Bill Johnson (R) in Ohio's 6th District race.

THE FIX MIX:

MC 'Bama?

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



890 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


Team Romney's fans wince at unforced errors


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1270 words


COSTA MESA, Calif. - Nine hundred of Mitt Romney's biggest benefactors - from Wall Street traders to hedge fund managers - gathered in a ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning to send their candidate on the two-month sprint to Election Day.

Spencer Zwick, the campaign's national finance chairman and a longtime Romney loyalist, took to the lectern to boast: "It is really turning into a cause. The momentum continues."

But the donors, being data guys, knew that Romney's momentum had stalled. And when they looked up at the Jumbotron to watch a biographical video showing the GOP nominee as warm-hearted, frugal and even a bit goofy, it was the culmination of much of what Republicans say is wrong with the Romney campaign: There is a great story to be told, and it isn't being shared with the country.

Now, with 49 days left until the election, Romney's chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, is being accused of not defining the candidate quickly enough over the summer and not helping the sometimes awkward nominee forge a closer bond with voters. Republicans are increasingly frustrated with the campaign's inability to capitalize on Americans' anxiety about the economy and their lukewarm approval of President Obama.

Romney faced another distraction Monday, as Mother Jones magazine unearthed a video that it said showed the candidate speaking at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla.In the video, Romney says that 47 percent of Americans are "dependent on government" and that they think "they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it." Romney adds that his job "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Monday night, just before a fundraiser in Costa Mesa where donors gave up to $50,000 per person, Romney hastily called a news conference to address the controversy. He stood by his remarks, although he conceded that they were "not elegantly stated" and that he had been "speaking off the cuff in response to a question." Romney said his comments underscored the contrast between Obama's "government-centered society" and his own "free-people, free-enterprise, free-market, consumer-driven approach."

Earlier Monday, advisers, donors and other top Romney supporters depicted a campaign in turmoil, saying that a series of strategic errors have set back the effort.

They pointed to the decision not to aggressively combat the slew of television ads that the Obama campaign aired over the summer characterizing Romney as a ruthless technocrat who shipped jobs overseas during his time at Bain Capital and who has mysterious foreign investments. They also said the candidate's overseas trip in July, which some top advisers urged him not take, turned into such a mess that it jeopardized his credentials.

Furthermore, supporters said the Republican National Convention was a missed opportunity because Romney did not lay out a clear policy-driven vision and because the lauded biographical video was scrapped from prime time in favor of Clint Eastwood's performance, which featured an empty chair.

Despite the griping, Romney aides insisted that no shake-up was in the works. Stevens declined to comment on the record. Advisers and fundraisers close to the operation said it is highly unlikely that Romney will replace him. "He's not changing horses," one said.

Publicly, Romney is trying to look past the reports of infighting. In an interview with Telemundo, he stood by Stevens and his other advisers. "I've got a terrific campaign," he said. "My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well with them. Our campaign is doing well." Asked if there would be changes in his team, Romney said, "No, I've got a good team."

Romney's Boston-based operation tried to begin a messaging reboot on Monday, shifting strategy to provide more details of his economic plan in speeches by the nominee and in ads over the next two weeks in the hopes of giving voters a clearer understanding of what he would do as president.

"That's where Governor Romney's focus is and that's where every single staffer and volunteer across the country has trained their focus," senior adviser Kevin Madden said. "The economy and the overall direction of the country are the things that matter to voters."

In the face of fresh polls showing Romney trailing Obama in some critical battleground states, and losing his lead nationally on the economy and on the issues of tax reform and deficit reduction, the campaign has been trying to reassure supporters.

Last week, aides briefed Republican members of Congress on the race, hoping to quiet any public complaining by lawmakers. On Monday morning, aides organized a conference call with top donors to try to calm any anxieties about the campaign and plan to make a follow-up call Tuesday morning, according to a campaign fundraiser.

In addition, the fundraiser said, the campaign is allowing some top donors to dial in to daily conference calls with staff members so they can keep up with the strategy.

This is partly a response to criticism from some of Romney's biggest fundraisers that his advisers, particularly Stevens, were not giving them enough attention and updates.

A few hours before Romney delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he and his wife, Ann, met privately with the campaign's top 100 fundraisers. They greeted them one by one, thanking them and posing for pictures, recalled one fundraiser who was in the room.

But that attention seemed to disappear the following week. After Obama opened a lead in polls coming out of the Democratic National Convention, the fundraiser said, Stevens and other advisers went into "scramble mode" and "internal lockdown."

This fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said donors "sort of feel that they're not getting any feedback or any touchy-feely from Stu Stevens. He doesn't pay the donors any lip service. It's like, 'You're writing a check so you can get your picture taken with Mitt Romney . . . but I don't need to tell you anything about what we're doing.' "

Other donors and advisers said a pivotal point occurred early this summer, when Obama launched an advertising onslaught against the GOP nominee, and Romney's campaign did not respond forcefully.

"They erred by not spending very aggressively in the summer to combat the negative ads," said one campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They felt they didn't need to because people weren't paying attention. There was some statistical empirical evidence that people were not paying attention. But some of [Obama's ads] worked and threw them on defense."

Although the team was raising money at a ferocious clip all summer, it was constrained by campaign finance laws requiring that much of that money be spent only after Romney was officially nominated.

In late August, Romney's ad gurus took on the task of defining their candidate. They produced a powerful video for the GOP convention, revealing Romney's emotion and humanity. Yet the video was scrapped from the prime-time lineup, and the campaign has not aired parts of it in its commercials.

When donors in New York saw the video last week, they responded with a standing ovation. Then, according to one top bundler who was at the event, some of them asked, "Why aren't we pushing this film more?"

The frustrated donors, according to the bundler, asked: "What's up with you guys? Why isn't that video being mainstreamed into the campaign?"

ruckerp@washpost.com

Ed O'Keefe in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



891 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


In leaked video, Romney disdains a 'dependent' 47%


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 956 words


COSTA MESA, Calif. - Mitt Romney confronted a new distraction Monday when a video surfaced that shows him dismissing President Obama's supporters as people who take no responsibility for their livelihoods and who think they are entitled to government handouts.In the video, published by Mother Jones magazine, the Republican presidential nominee tells a private audience of campaign donors that Obama backers will vote for the president "no matter what." Romney said that he does not "worry about those people."

Romney hastily called a news conference here Monday night to try to diffuse the controversy. He acknowledged having made the remarks and stood by them, although he conceded that they were "not elegantly stated" and that he had been "speaking off the cuff in response to a question."

Romney said his comments underscored the contrast between the two candidates' divergent visions for the nation.

"This is ultimately a question about direction for the country: Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits or do you believe instead in a free-enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?" he told reporters. He added that his is a "free-people, free-enterprise, free-market, consumer-driven approach."

Romney addressed reporters from a room deep inside the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, where upstairs hundreds of his supporters were standing around elegantly appointed tables swilling wine and awaiting the candidate's remarks at a fundraiser. Tickets cost as much as $50,000 per person, and the campaign said it raised $4 million at the event.

In the video, Romney is seen speaking at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., at the home of Marc Leder, a private equity manager, according to the Mother Jones article.

"There are 47 percent who are with him," Romney said of Obama, "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax."

He added that his job "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

His remarks could undermine recent attempts by his campaign to present him as a caring and charitable leader in his church and community.

Romney, trying to provide some context for the comments he made in the video, told reporters Monday night that he was talking to donors about campaign strategy, not his vision for the country."

"It's not elegantly stated. . . . I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question," he said.

"Of course individuals are going to take responsibility for their lives," he said. "My campaign is about helping people take more responsibility and becoming employed again, particularly those who don't have work. This whole campaign is based on getting people jobs again, putting people back to work," he said.

The Obama campaign quickly seized on the video.

"It's shocking that a candidate for president of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as 'victims,' entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take 'personal responsibility' for their lives. It's hard to serve as president for all Americans when you've disdainfully written off half the nation," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement.

An Obama campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said later that it is possible that excerpts from the video will show up in a forthcoming campaign ad.

In the video, Romney said that he does not vilify the president because his own campaign's discussions with focus groups of independent voters who supported Obama in 2008 suggest that tough talk does not work.

"When you say to them, 'Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?' they overwhelmingly say, 'No,' " Romney said. "They love the phrase that he's 'over his head.' . . . We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us."

Candidates tend to talk more freely at closed-door fundraisers than they do publicly, and when those remarks leak out, they can create controversy. In 2008, Obama told supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion" - a quote that was used against him Monday by Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, during a campaign event in Des Moines.

The mention of Obama's 2008 remarks - and Ryan's "This Catholic deer hunter is guilty as charged" rejoinder - has been a staple of the GOP vice-presidential nominee's stump speech.

In the video, Romney also noted his deficit in the polls among Hispanic voters and joked about his family background. His father, George, was born in Mexico while his American grandparents lived there. "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

He added: "I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."

The video, released in bits and pieces, appears to have been captured by a hidden camera during a question-and-answer session that was closed to reporters.Ten separate portions of the video, including Romney's remarks about Obama supporters, were first posted on YouTube on Aug. 27 by a user identified as "Anne Onymous," who is listed as having joined the video service that day. The user's account includes a picture of a young woman, and lists their location as "China."

ruckerp@washpost.com

Dan Eggen and Rachel Weiner in Washington and Felicia Sonmez in Des Moines contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



892 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 4:03 PM EST


Ad watch: Democrats say Romney is no friend of middle class voters;
Pro-Obama super PAC releases a new ad casting Romney as unfriendly to themiddle class.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 101 words


Priorities USA is a super PAC supporting President Obama. Here's the group's latest ad, "We The People."

What it says: "Mitt Romney's budget plan will hurt the middle class, raising taxes on the average family by up to $2,000, while giving a tax break of $250,000 to multimillionaires."

What it means: Romney's policies are not middle-class friendly. Don't vote for him unless you want tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Who will see it: Voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



893 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 3:34 PM EST


Who, again, is Joe Ricketts?;
The wealthy entrepreneur is back in the news, pledging to spent $12 million helping elect Republicans this year.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 902 words


Four months after he first made a splash in the 2012 presidential race, Joe Ricketts is back on the radar.

The wealthy entrepreneur, who funds his own super PAC, is pledging to spend $10 million on helping Mitt Romney win the presidency and $2 million to help GOP House and Senate candidates.

But unlike previous wealthy super PAC donors, Ricketts is a decidedly private and unassuming character. That changed a little in May, when a proposal was leaked in which an ad-maker urged Ricketts to fund ads focused on President Obama's ties to his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, just days after Ricketts played a big role in helping Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer pull an upset in her state's Republican Senate primary.

Here's a look back at the profile we did of Ricketts in May (the full post is here):

But just who is (Joe Ricketts)?

Actually, he's a man with some pretty close ties to Obamaworld and the Democratic Party.

Ricketts himself is a former Democrat who became a Republican and later an independent.

His daughter, Laura, is a gay and lesbian activist and big-time Obama bundler, having raised around half a million dollars for the man her father would apparently like to bring down.

The Ricketts family also owns the Chicago Cubs, which is in negotiations with former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (now the mayor of Chicago) to get city help in renovating the team's 98-year-old stadium, Wrigley Field. One of Joe's sons, Tom, leads those negotiations as the Cubs' chairman.

(We reported Thursday afternoon that Emanuel is "livid," according to an aide, with the Ricketts family and has cut off communications for the time being.)

And another Ricketts son, Pete Ricketts, is a Republican National Committeeman from Nebraska who unsuccessfully self-funded a 2006 Senate campaign against Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). Pete and Laura also serve on the Cubs board, along with a fourth sibling, Todd.

"We have different political views on how to achieve what is best for the future of America, but we agree that each of us is entitled to our own views and our right to voice those views," Laura Ricketts said in a statement today. "Though we may have diverse political views, above all we love and respect each other."

The seed money for all this activism and entrepreneurship is the elder Ricketts, a self-made man who started TD Ameritrade in the 1970s when it was known by a different name, First Omaha Securities.

The family's net worth has been ranked as high as 93rd on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. In 2009, Joe Ricketts himself ranked 371st, with assets estimated at $1 billion.

According to those who know him best, Joe Ricketts, 70, is a reclusive executive type who has rarely sought the spotlight or spoken publicly.

He left the company's board of directors in February but gave little indication that he intended to get more involved in politics.

"I don't think he seeks to be the public face of anything like that, but I would say the things that he believes in, he's very passionate about," said Robert Slezak, a former Ameritrade executive who worked with Ricketts for a decade. "I think he would prefer to deflect the spotlight on someone else."

Yet Ricketts has been an emerging financial force in politics in recent years - first by launching an anti-earmark campaign called Taxpayers Against Earmarks. Later, with the advent of super PACs, Ricketts launched Ending Spending, a super PAC and nonprofit issue advocacy group that spent $860,000 against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the 2010 election.

This year, Ending Spending is promising to get even more involved, including helping Fischer to victory Tuesday and spending on behalf of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) in his recall election next month.

The group also had crafted an ad to be run against Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in his primary, but wound up backing off when it became clear he was going to lose.

Ricketts is also a top donor this year to the anti-incumbent Campaign for Primary Accountability, a group that has targeted long-time incumbents regardless of their party affiliation or politics.

Between building Ameritrade into what it is today and his new-found political involvement, Ricketts launched a number of start-ups in different industries.

He's owner of a successful new New York news website, DNAinfo.com, a natural bison meat producer, and the upstart American Film Company, which produced the 2010 Robert Redford film "The Conspirator," a historical documentary about the legal aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

The Ricketts family acquired a 95 percent share of the Cubs in 2009, but the team since then has experienced a drop in attendance, and in 2011, the Chicago Tribune reported that the team was one of nine major league baseball teams in violation of the league's debt rules.

Joe Ricketts is not directly involved in the team's finances, though, as his children run the team.

According to a 2006 profile of Pete Rickets from the Omaha World-Herald, Joe Ricketts wouldn't allow any of his children to work for Ameritrade before their 30th birthday, wanting them to expand their horizons before returning to the family business.

In that profile, Joe Ricketts is described as a man who was business-first and didn't coddle his children.

That approach seems to live on today, with Ricketts's political power moves running interference on his children's business and political interests.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



894 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 3:04 PM EST


President Obama's jab at Mitt Romney: 'All you've done is send [China] our jobs';
We review the evidence about whether the GOP nominee outsourced jobs to China.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1678 words


"I understand my opponent has been running around Ohio claiming he's going to roll up his sleeves and he's going to take the fight to China. Now, here's the thing.  His experience has been owning companies that were called 'pioneers' in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China.  He made money investing in companies that uprooted from here and went to China.  Pioneers.  Now, Ohio, you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

- President Obama, at a rally in Cincinnati, Sept. 17, 2012

 "I guess he's also not going to apologize for the investments he still holds in China or the American jobs he outsourced to China as the president, CEO, chairman and sole shareholder of Bain Capital."

- Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for the Obama campaign, in a video released over the weekend

President Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Monday, where he responded to a tough (and misleading) ad by Mitt Romney on his record on China with barbed comments on Romney's record as an investor. (For good measure, the White House also filed a trade complaint against Beijing.) The president's remarks were foreshadowed by a video released by the Obama campaign over the weekend, in which Cutter asserts that the GOP presidential nominee outsourced jobs to China.

 This is a pretty serious charge. What's the evidence for this?

The Facts

 Obama's reference to Romney owning companies that were "pioneers" comes directly from a front-page article in The Washington Post. This was the opening sentence:

Mitt Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

 

As we have noted before, the Obama campaign has misinterpreted this article in some of its television advertising. Note, for instance, that the article refers to Bain Capital, not Romney personally. As we said before:

 The actual article, in fact, does not say that transfers of U.S. jobs took place while Romney ran the private equity firm of Bain Capital. ...Instead, the article says that Bain was prescient in identifying an emerging business trend - the movement of back-office, customer service and other functions out of companies that were willing to let third parties handle that business. Several of the companies mentioned in the article grew into major international players in the offshoring field today.

 However, the president put it bluntly: "You can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."  In the video, embedded below, Cutter referred to "the American jobs he outsourced to China."

In defense of a television ad that claimed Romney "shipped jobs to China and Mexico," the Obama campaign (to support the China reference) has pointed to the case of Holson Burnes, a Rhode Island company that manufactured picture frame and photo albums. Bain Capital owned the company from 1987 and 1995, so there are none of the murky questions about whether Romney was still actively managing Bain when he ran the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from 1999-2001.

 But there are many murky questions about whether American jobs were actually shipped to China. The best piece of evidence is an Associated Press report that says a factory was closed and 150 workers lost their jobs: "Some jobs were sent north, where months later many of those were also eliminated. Other operations went overseas." There is no mention of a specific country.

 But our colleagues at FactCheck.org did an extensive look at this case and discovered that in this instance, the company eliminated an entire business line (photo albums for professional photographers). So operations were not moved overseas, let alone to China. Overall, FactCheck.org found, there is no clear evidence that Romney, during Bain's management of this company, shipped U.S. jobs to China. The company had arrangements with foreign suppliers, including in China, for 75 percent of its photo frames but manufactured 75 percent of its photo albums in the United States.

 In a telephone news conference this past weekend, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt pointed to other companies:

 "We can go down the list whether it's Stream International, or Modus Media, or Global-Tech. Mitt Romney and Bain Capital made investments in companies that created jobs overseas instead of in the United States.

 "Let's take a look at the example of Global-Tech. Bain invests in 1998. This is a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on U.S. outsourcing for its profits and explicitly stated that outsourcing was crucial to its success. These companies were on the frontlines of shipping American jobs overseas. This was in 1998, so there's no dispute as to what Mitt Romney's involvement was with the company at that time."

Stream International and Modus Media were mentioned in the original Washington Post article, though no reference is made of Stream having operations in China. Modus was originally a subsidiary of Stream but became an independent company in 1998. Modus had operations that included facilities in China but there is no evidence that U.S. jobs were shipped there while Romney was managing Bain. (In 2000, Modus closed a plant in California while opening one in Mexico, but that's not China - and Romney was on leave then.)

 Finally, LaBolt mentioned Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, which manufactured household appliances for a number of consumer product companies, such as Sunbeam, Hamilton Beach and other companies. But this was an investment made by two Bain affiliates, principally Brookside Capital. This is in essence a hedge fund, meaning it makes passive stock investments. Fortune magazine looked into this fund, and here is how it describes itself on the Bain Website.

 "Brookside Capital is the public equity affiliate of Bain Capital. The principal investment objective of the Fund is to achieve capital appreciation through investing primarily in publicly traded equity securities globally. Brookside employs an experienced team of industry-oriented investment professionals to achieve its investment objective. The Brookside team evaluates investments based on in-depth strategic and financial analysis, emphasizing industry fundamentals, competitive position and management capability."

Still, it is worth noting that in a 1999 Securities and Exchange Commission filing Romney, as with other Bain entities, was listed as "the sole shareholder, sole director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookside Inc. and thus is the controlling person of Brookside Inc." Presumably he kept a close watch on Brookside's investments, but these stock purchases still are of a different nature than Bain Capital's private equity deals.

Global-Tech clearly was in the business of benefiting from outsourcing, though one news release issued by the company during the 1998-2000 period of Bain ownership bemoans the fact that Sunbeam had delayed closing its plants, forcing Global-Tech to delay expansion plans.

Moreover, Romney at the time was clearly interested in investments in China. In a transcript of a Feb. 11, 1998 panel discussion published in the Boston Globe, Romney spoke of visiting a factory - the company name is not mentioned - with earnest Chinese workers:

I just came back from a trip to China, and I went to a factory of 5,000 workers making bread makers and mixers and so forth. And 5,000 Chinese, all graduated from high school, 18 to 24 years old, were working, working, working, as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour. They cared about their jobs; they wouldn't even look up as we walked by. I said to the plant manager, "Why don't they look up at us? We're Americans, we look funny, they've never seen folks like us walk through this old factory." They said, "Because work here is very important, and they concentrate on their work."

Romney told a somewhat similar story - though he claimed it was a factory with 20,000 workers - in a video that surfaced recently of a private fundraiser. The remarks are certainly interesting, but Bain has claimed this was an investment that did not pan out.

Without evidence of a direct investment, it seems a stretch to say Romney shipped jobs to China because of a passive investment in a foreign company. This is different than investments in which Bain Capital took a direct role in helping to manage a company.

Given Romney's apparent interest in Chinese investments, we would welcome additional evidence but did not receive more from the Obama campaign.

 Finally, one other example, which the Obama campaign did not highlight: Bain's 1990s investment in GT Bicycles (which assembled bicycles by taking advantage of lower-cost labor in China, Taiwan and elsewhere) indeed was an harbinger of a trend that later decimated bike manufacturing in the United States. But during the period that Romney was still at Bain, GT actually added jobs in the United States.

The Pinocchio Test

 The president and his campaign have gone too far here. There is no evidence that Romney, through Bain investments in which he had an active role, was responsible for shipping American jobs to China.

 We would have considered this a Four-Pinocchio violation, except for the fact that some of the Bain investments (such as GT Bicycles) were a harbinger of broader trends in the transfer of American jobs overseas. Global-Tech also benefited from outsourcing but as far as we can tell it was a passive investment by a Bain-related hedge fund.

That means Romney likely profited from outsourcing. But that is a far cry from saying that Romney himself was responsible for outsourcing American jobs to China.

 Three Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



895 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 2:47 PM EST


Can Democrat Joe Donnelly win the Indiana Senate race?;
In an increasingly Republican state that Obama is not expected to win, the fundamentals favor the GOP candidate. But for several reason, the Democratic nominee is staying competitive.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 761 words


At the beginning of this election cycle, the Indiana Senate race wasn't viewed widely as a pickup opportunity for Democrats. But with just 49 days to go until the election, it's certainly shaping up as a contest to watch in the larger battle for the Senate majority.

If that sounds surprising, it's because it should. Indiana is a state with two Republican senators and a popular Republican governor. And both Democrats and Republicans agree that President Obama is less popular there than he was in 2008, when he carried the state by a point over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). This time, no one is talking about a repeat victory.

Yet, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) is in a competitive position for the stretch run of the Senate race. An internal poll conducted for his campaign last week shows him running about even with state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) (so have other surveys). The National Republican Senatorial Committee is buying ad time in the state. And Mourdock isn't a flawless nominee.

When Mourdock defeated longtime Sen. Richard Lugar (R) in May, a couple of things happened. One, Democrats got the opponent they wanted. For Democrats, defeating Lugar, who enjoyed strong support among moderates, would have been nearly impossible in November. Not so for the more conservative Mourdock. Two, the intense competition in the primary left Mourdock battered and in need of financial reinforcements.

Enter Donnelly, a blue dog Democrat whose South Bend-based district became more Republican in redistricting, prompting him to consider options beyond the House. National Democrats successfully recruited him away from a tough reelection bid and into the Senate race. So far, he's held his own.

Democrats have sought to cast Mourdock as a hard-line partisan while simultaneously pitching Donnelly as a bipartisan legislator. Mourdock has, on occasion, appeared resistant to compromise in his public statements, making it easier for Democrats to present their case. (A recent Donnelly ad even uses Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan against Mourdock on this front.)

A major reason why a Donnelly victory would be an upset is that hitting Mourdock is only half the battle in Indiana. The other half is more difficult, and involves responding to GOP attacks tying the Democrat to Obama, who is unpopular in the state. A recent ad from the anti-tax group Club For Growth, for example, mentions Donnelly's vote for the federal health care law and the stimulus, two big liabilities, given the partisan tilt of the state.

One policy Donnelly has been using to go on offense is the auto bailout. He released an ad earlier this summer touting his support for the measure - and, notably, Mourdock's opposition to it.

All the talk about national issues - bailouts, the stimulus, health care, Obama, etc. - means the outcome of the race could rest more heavily on larger themes than the candidates themselves.

"The two candidates themselves will not decide this race. The race will be decided by outside spending and outside messaging," said Ed Feingenbaum, a nonpartisan political analyst who authors the Indiana Legislative Insight newsletter.

For now, the ad spending battle (taking into account the candidates and outside groups, since the end of the primary) is roughly even, with the GOP side spending a bit more. As is the case with most races, Republican groups are ultimately expected to spend the most money, and that only adds to Donnelly's challenge.

Mourdock got a boost when Romney stumped with him last month. Ryan also appeared with him on Monday. That's what it comes down to for Mourdock - linking himself to the national ticket that is expected to do well in Indiana and limiting Donnelly's crossover appeal with discontented Lugar supporters. (Lugar, for his own part, says he won't be stumpingwith Mourdock this fall.)

In the end, Republicans will probably have to spend more in Indiana than they had originally anticipated. But the same can be said of Democrats in Connecticut, where the Senate race is looking more competitive than most observers believed it would be. In other words, this kind of thing happens in various places on the map each cycle.

To win, Donnelly has to defy the increasingly Republican tilt of the state and outpace his party's presidential nominee there. These are no small tasks and for that reason Mourdock should still generally be regarded as the favorite. But Donnelly's performance so far has put him in a strong position to compete. And that's welcome news for Democrats looking to hold their slim majority in November.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



896 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 2:37 PM EST


Ad watch: Mitt Romney reaches out to women;
New Romney ad meant to attract women voters.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 69 words


The Mitt Romney campaign ad, "Dear Daughter"

What it says: "Obama's policies are making it harder on women. The poverty rate for women - the highest in 17 years."

What it means: Look at the economic impact the president's policies have had on women. The numbers are not good. 

Who will see it: The Romney campaign did not say where the commercial is running.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



897 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 18, 2012 Tuesday 1:33 PM EST


President Obama's real opponent in 2012;
Without conservative outside groups, this might not be a close race at all.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1186 words


With total television ad spending on the presidential race now having crested $500 million, the real fight on the airwaves is not between President Obama and Mitt Romney but rather between President Obama and a cavalcade of conservative-aligned outside groups, according to an analysis of ad buy information provided to the Fix.

As of Friday evening, Republicans had spent $314 million on ads with Romney accounting for just 27 percent ($86 million) of that total. Democrats had spent $277 million on ads with Obama accounting for 80 percent ($222 million) of that total.

To put those big numbers in simpler terms: Only one in every four Republican/conservative ads that has run this election cycle has been paid for by Romney while four in every five Democratic ads have been funded directly by the Obama campaign.

There are two major reasons for this huge inequity.

1. Romney spent heavily from his primary account to win the Republican nomination. So while he could raise money for the general election all summer, he couldn't spend it until he formally became the GOP nominee at the party's national convention last month. That reality meant that Romney had to depend heavily on super PACs and 501(c)(4) groups to keep him competitive on the TV airwaves in swing states over the spring and summer months since Obama had no primary challenge and could spend funds freely during that period. (To be clear: Outside groups - on both sides - can't coordinate with their party's candidate.)

2. Obama's discouragement of outside Democratic groups in the 2008 election and his slow adoption of their necessity this time around ensured that the Republican outside financing world was far better organized and funded than their Democratic counterparts. To date, Priorities USA Action, the leading pro-Obama super PAC, has spent $51 million on TV ads. Republicans have four groups (Restore Our Future, Crossroads GPS, American Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity) who have each spent at least $40 million on ads.

No matter the reasoning for the spending disparity, it's clear that without the likes of American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and Americans for Prosperity, Romney might not even be within shouting distance of Obama in both national and swing state polling today.

In fact, in six of the nine states broadly accepted as tossups, total Republican spending has eclipsed total Democratic spending, a fact almost totally attributable to the largesse of Republican outside groups. (The three states where Democrats have outspent their GOP rivals are Colorado, Ohio and New Hampshire.)

If conservative outside groups kept Romney in the game - some will debate that characterization, but we believe this still has the makings of a very competitive contest - then it will be up to the candidate's own campaign to seize the spending baton in the final 49 days.

Romney raked in more than $100 million in each of the last three months and should be able to outspend Obama rather significantly in the final weeks of the race. That goes double when you consider that the outside groups on the Republican side won't simply stop spending because Romney now has the money he didn't over the last few months.

At issue: With so much money being spent on both sides in the final weeks of this campaign, is Romney's advantage on the airwaves lessened? Or can he use what could well be a two-to-one spending edge between now and Nov. 6 to reshape the race?

Romney's 47 percent problem: Romney has a significant problems on his hands thanks to his remarks at a closed-door fundraiser.

Mother Jones on Monday pointed to a series of videos from May showing the GOP presidential nominee saying some pretty blunt and semi-controversial things about race (saying he would have a better chance to become president if his dad were Mexican) and Obama supporters (stereotyping them as government-dependent moochers).

"There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it," Romney said. "That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them."

(The publication is out with another video this morning in which Romney says that Palestinians are "committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel.")

After the flap quickly escalated into a headache for the Romney campaign, a press conference was hastily called Monday night in which Romney stood by the jist of his remarks.

"It's not elegantly stated," he said. "I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question."

Obama's campaign responded Monday by saying that Romney is not looking to be president of the whole country.

Of course, the roles here were once reversed. It was just four years ago that Obama was recorded at his own closed-door event talking about how people "cling to guns and religion" when things don't go well in their lives.

The parallels between the two situations are striking; both feature the candidate inartfully characterizing people who support the other team. Of course, Romney's comments will be much more important to this campaign, given that they aren't four years old.

And given all the problems Romney is dealing with right now, you have to wonder when the hits will stop coming.

Fixbits:

Super PAC benefactor Joe Ricketts says he will spend $10 million to help Romney and $2 million to help GOP congressional candidates through his Ending Spending Fund super PAC.

Joe Biden says he's "a good vice president."

A third poll this week shows Elizabeth Warren (D) overtaking Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Suffolk University shows her leading 48 percent to 44 percent.

The Sierra Club, which usually backs Democrats, endorses independent former governor Angus King over Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill in the Maine Senate race.

Former congresswoman Heather Wilson's (R-N.M.) Senate campaign released a poll showing her trailing by five points. National Republicans recently pulled their money from the state.

Democrats are up with a strong new ad hitting Rep. Denny Rehberg (D-Mont.) for his comments on lobbyists.

World Wrestling Entertainment, which has reportedly scrubbed the Internet of some of its racier content as former WWE executive Linda McMahon (R) runs for Senate in Connecticut, has now gotten an online site to take down a web video from the Connecticut Democratic Party that features some of those clips.

The Democratic House Majority PAC super PAC is launching $1.3 million worth of ads in districts held by Reps. Bobby Schilling (D-Ill.) and Charlie Bass (D-N.H.), in the race between Reps. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) and Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) and in former congressman Jay Inslee's (D-Wash.) district.

A new Siena College poll shows Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) leading Democrat Sean Patrick Maloney 46 percent to 33 percent.

Must-reads:

"Mitt Romney's September challenge" - Dan Balz, Washington Post

"Ryan proposed automatic defense cuts in earlier budget plan" - Lori Montgomery, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



898 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


Team Romney's fans wince at unforced errors


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1268 words


DATELINE: COSTA MESA, CALIF.


COSTA MESA, Calif. - Nine hundred of Mitt Romney's biggest benefactors - from Wall Street traders to hedge fund managers - gathered in a ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning to send their candidate on the two-month sprint to Election Day.

Spencer Zwick, the campaign's national finance chairman and a longtime Romney loyalist, took to the lectern to boast: "It is really turning into a cause. The momentum continues."

But the donors, being data guys, knew that Romney's momentum had stalled. And when they looked up at the Jumbotron to watch a biographical video showing the GOP nominee as warm-hearted, frugal and even a bit goofy, it was the culmination of much of what Republicans say is wrong with the Romney campaign: There is a great story to be told, and it isn't being shared with the country.

Now, with 49 days left until the election, Romney's chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, is being accused of not defining the candidate quickly enough over the summer and not helping the sometimes awkward nominee forge a closer bond with voters. Republicans are increasingly frustrated with the campaign's inability to capitalize on Americans' anxiety about the economy and their lukewarm approval of President Obama.

Romney faced another distraction Monday, as Mother Jones magazine unearthed a video that it said showed the candidate speaking at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla.In the video, Romney says that 47 percent of Americans are "dependent on government" and that they think "they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

Romney adds that his job "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Monday night, just before a fundraiser in Costa Mesa where donors gave up to $50,000 per person, Romney hastily called a news conference to address the controversy. He stood by his remarks, although he conceded that they were "not elegantly stated" and that he had been "speaking off the cuff in response to a question." Romney said his comments underscored the contrast between Obama's "government-centered society" and his own "free-people, free-enterprise, free-market, consumer-driven approach."

Earlier Monday, advisers, donors and other top Romney supporters depicted a campaign in turmoil, saying that a series of strategic errors have set back the effort.

They pointed to the decision not to aggressively combat the slew of television ads that the Obama campaign aired over the summer characterizing Romney as a ruthless technocrat who shipped jobs overseas during his time at Bain Capital and who has mysterious foreign investments. They also said the candidate's overseas trip in July, which some top advisers urged him not take, turned into such a mess that it jeopardized his credentials.

Furthermore, supporters said the Republican National Convention was a missed opportunity because Romney did not lay out a clear policy-driven vision and because the lauded biographical video was scrapped from prime time in favor of Clint Eastwood's performance, which featured an empty chair.

Despite the griping, Romney aides insisted that no shake-up was in the works. Stevens declined to comment on the record. Advisers and fundraisers close to the operation said it is highly unlikely that Romney will replace him. "He's not changing horses," one said.

Publicly, Romney is trying to look past the reports of infighting. In an interview with Telemundo, he stood by Stevens and his other advisers. "I've got a terrific campaign," he said. "My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well with them. Our campaign is doing well." Asked if there would be changes in his team, Romney said, "No, I've got a good team."

Romney's Boston-based operation tried to begin a messaging reboot on Monday, shifting strategy to provide more details of his economic plan in speeches by the nominee and in ads over the next two weeks in the hopes of giving voters a clearer understanding of what he would do as president.

"That's where Governor Romney's focus is and that's where every single staffer and volunteer across the country has trained their focus," senior adviser Kevin Madden said. "The economy and the overall direction of the country are the things that matter to voters."

In the face of fresh polls showing Romney trailing Obama in some critical battleground states, and losing his lead nationally on the economy and on the issues of tax reform and deficit reduction, the campaign has been trying to reassure supporters.

Last week, aides briefed Republican members of Congress on the race, hoping to quiet any public complaining by lawmakers. On Monday morning, aides organized a conference call with top donors to try to calm any anxieties about the campaign and plan to make a follow-up call Tuesday morning, according to a campaign fundraiser.

In addition, the fundraiser said, the campaign is allowing some top donors to dial in to daily conference calls with staff members so they can keep up with the strategy.

This is partly a response to criticism from some of Romney's biggest fundraisers that his advisers, particularly Stevens, were not giving them enough attention and updates.

A few hours before Romney delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he and his wife, Ann, met privately with the campaign's top 100 fundraisers. They greeted them one by one, thanking them and posing for pictures, recalled one fundraiser who was in the room.

But that attention seemed to disappear the following week. After Obama opened a lead in polls coming out of the Democratic National Convention, the fundraiser said, Stevens and other advisers went into "scramble mode" and "internal lockdown."

This fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said donors "sort of feel that they're not getting any feedback or any touchy-feely from Stu Stevens. He doesn't pay the donors any lip service. It's like, 'You're writing a check so you can get your picture taken with Mitt Romney . . . but I don't need to tell you anything about what we're doing.' "

Other donors and advisers said a pivotal point occurred early this summer, when Obama launched an advertising onslaught against the GOP nominee, and Romney's campaign did not respond forcefully.

"They erred by not spending very aggressively in the summer to combat the negative ads," said one campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They felt they didn't need to because people weren't paying attention. There was some statistical empirical evidence that people were not paying attention. But some of [Obama's ads] worked and threw them on defense."

Although the team was raising money at a ferocious clip all summer, it was constrained by campaign finance laws requiring that much of that money be spent only after Romney was officially nominated.

In late August, Romney's ad gurus took on the task of defining their candidate. They produced a powerful video for the GOP convention, revealing Romney's emotion and humanity. Yet the video was scrapped from the prime-time lineup, and the campaign has not aired parts of it in its commercials.

When donors in New York saw the video last week, they responded with a standing ovation. Then, according to one top bundler who was at the event, some of them asked, "Why aren't we pushing this film more?"

The frustrated donors, according to the bundler, asked: "What's up with you guys? Why isn't that video being mainstreamed into the campaign?"

ruckerp@washpost.com

Ed O'Keefe in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



899 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 18, 2012 Tuesday
Met 2 Edition


In leaked video, Romney disdains a 'dependent' 47%


BYLINE: Philip Rucker


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 952 words


DATELINE: COSTA MESA, CALIF.


COSTA MESA, Calif. - Mitt Romney confronted a new distraction Monday when avideo surfacedthat shows him dismissing President Obama's supporters as people who take no responsibility for their livelihoods and who think they are entitled to government handouts.

In the video, published by Mother Jones magazine, the Republican presidential nominee tells a private audience of campaign donors that Obama backers will vote for the president "no matter what." Romney said that he does not "worry about those people."

Romney hastily called a news conference here Monday night to try to diffuse the controversy. He acknowledged having made the remarks and stood by them, although he conceded that they were "not elegantly stated" and that he had been "speaking off the cuff in response to a question."

Romney said his comments underscored the contrast between the two candidates' divergent visions for the nation.

"This is ultimately a question about direction for the country: Do you believe in a government-centered society that provides more and more benefits or do you believe instead in a free-enterprise society where people are able to pursue their dreams?" he told reporters. He added that his is a "free-people, free-enterprise, free-market, consumer-driven approach."

Romney addressed reporters from a room deep inside the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, where upstairs hundreds of his supporters were standing around elegantly appointed tables swilling wine and awaiting the candidate's remarks at a fundraiser. Tickets cost as much as $50,000 per person, and the campaign said it raised $4 million at the event.

In the video, Romney is seen speaking at a May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., at the home of Marc Leder, a private equity manager, according to the Mother Jones article.

"There are 47 percent who are with him," Romney said of Obama, "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax."

He added that his job "is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

His remarks could undermine recent attempts by his campaign to present him as a caring and charitable leader in his church and community.

Romney, trying to provide some context for the comments he made in the video, told reporters Monday night that he was talking to donors about campaign strategy, not his vision for the country."

"It's not elegantly stated. . . . I'm speaking off the cuff in response to a question," he said.

"Of course individuals are going to take responsibility for their lives," he said. "My campaign is about helping people take more responsibility and becoming employed again, particularly those who don't have work. This whole campaign is based on getting people jobs again, putting people back to work," he said.

The Obama campaign quickly seized on the video.

"It's shocking that a candidate for president of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as 'victims,' entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take 'personal responsibility' for their lives. It's hard to serve as president for all Americans when you've disdainfully written off half the nation," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement.

An Obama campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said later that it is possible that excerpts from the video will show up in a forthcoming campaign ad.

In the video, Romney said that he does not vilify the president because his own campaign's discussions with focus groups of independent voters who supported Obama in 2008 suggest that tough talk does not work.

"When you say to them, 'Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?' they overwhelmingly say, 'No,' " Romney said. "They love the phrase that he's 'over his head.' . . . We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us."

Candidates tend to talk more freely at closed-door fundraisers than they do publicly, and when those remarks leak out, they can create controversy. In 2008, Obama told supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion" - a quote that was used against him Monday by Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, during a campaign event in Des Moines.

The mention of Obama's 2008 remarks - and Ryan's "This Catholic deer hunter is guilty as charged" rejoinder - has been a staple of the GOP vice-presidential nominee's stump speech.

In the video, Romney also noted his deficit in the polls among Hispanic voters and joked about his family background. His father, George, was born in Mexico while his American grandparents lived there. "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

He added: "I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."

The video, released in bits and pieces, appears to have been captured by a hidden camera during a question-and-answer session that was closed to reporters.Ten separate portions of the video, including Romney's remarks about Obama supporters, were first posted on YouTube on Aug. 27 by a user identified as "Anne Onymous," who is listed as having joined the video service that day. The user's account includes a picture of a young woman, and lists their location as "China."

ruckerp@washpost.com

Dan Eggen and Rachel Weiner in Washington and Felicia Sonmez in Des Moines contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



900 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 17, 2012 Monday
The International Herald Tribune


What Is Romney's Tax Plan?


BYLINE: By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS


SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Foreign Desk; LETTER FROM WASHINGTON; Pg.


LENGTH: 855 words


WASHINGTON -- In U.S. national politics, Republicans flourish when the focus is on tax cuts; they suffer when Medicare is the focus. It looks like it'll be different this year.

Mitt Romney has proposed huge tax cuts that principally benefit the wealthy, while refusing to say how he would pay for them by closing unspecified loopholes. This lacks credibility and may become one of the rare tax-cut promises that is a political loser.

On Medicare, Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, have put forth a plan that ultimately would turn the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly into a premium support, or voucher, program. Democrats are winning on this issue in Florida and elsewhere.

There are two reasons this is no longer the third rail for Republicans. One, a counterattack charging, speciously, that President Barack Obama's health care program cuts benefits for Medicare recipients. The other is a general recognition that changes need to be made in the program and whatever the problems with the Romney-Ryan proposals, the president has ducked the issue.

On taxes, it's Mr. Romney who's ducking. He has proposed a tax cut of more than $4 trillion over 10 years, an across-the-board 20 percent reduction in individual income tax rates and the elimination of the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax and taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest for those earning less than $200,000. The corporate tax rate would come down to 25 percent from 35 percent.

He insists this can be achieved without raising revenue, by limiting tax preferences. He refuses to specify any. The candidate cites Republican experts like the Princeton University economist Harvey Rosen. However, Mr. Rosen says this is feasible if Mr. Romney eliminates the popular tax deductions for items like home mortgages and charitable contributions for those making more than $100,000 a year.

That's a nonstarter for many Republicans, even with the trade-off of lower rates.

Thus, most tax experts say the Romney plan is a mirage.

''You can't get enough base-broadening to finance his rate reductions,'' says Michael Graetz, a Columbia Law School professor who was a top tax official in President George H.W. Bush's Treasury Department. ''Romney says what he will do on tax cuts, but he's not prepared to say what he would do on the hard stuff.''

Moreover, Mr. Graetz asks, ''Do we believe that Mitt Romney will make tithes to the Mormon Church and other charitable outfits nondeductible?'' In the two years of tax returns Mr. Romney has released, he made $42.6 million and gave $7 million to charity, mostly to his Mormon Church.

Promises for a revenue-neutral plan in which the middle class and small businesses get a net tax cut suggest higher overall taxes for either the poor or the rich. The Romney campaign refuses to comment. Mr. Romney's tax problem is further compounded when he insists his plan wouldn't change the progressivity of the tax code. He cites Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax-reform bill and the recommendations of the 2010 Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction panel as models for cutting tax rates and broadening the base in a nonregressive manner.

What Mr. Romney doesn't say is how this was achieved. Capital-gains taxes were increased and treated as ordinary income in both the 1986 Tax Reform Act and the Bowles-Simpson plan. Mr. Romney has ruled out any increase in those levies.

Many of Mr. Romney's proposed tax cuts benefit the wealthy, and tax experts say it would be exceedingly difficult to retain the current progressivity if higher capital-gains rates were taken off the table.

Moreover, Mr. Reagan financed the lower individual rates with sizable increases in corporate taxes, like the elimination of the investment tax credit. Mr. Romney wants to cut, not increase, corporate taxes.

Mr. Reagan and George W. Bush gained the upper hand in the tax debate with promises of big cuts. Neither talked about any offsetting revenue increases.

A simple look at the budget deficit explains why the situation was different then. In 1980, the U.S. deficit was $60 billion; the public was frustrated about stagflation, a stagnant economy with soaring prices.

Twelve years ago, the second President Bush promised a tax cut because his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, left him a $240 billion budget surplus.

The deficit is projected to reach $1.3 trillion this year, and this is a centerpiece of the Romney-Ryan attack on Mr. Obama's economic performance.

Research by Democrats shows that undecided or persuadable voters -- disproportionately white, younger and not college-educated -- are turned off by what they see as the unfairness of the Romney tax plan. A current Obama ad charges the Republican would increase taxes on the middle class by $2,000 to pay for a tax cut for millionaires. While this is conjecture, the Romney camp has no specifics to refute it.

Democrats are plotting ways to accentuate the lack of transparency in Mr. Romney's plan. One notion is to tie it to his refusal to release more than a few years of his own tax returns with the charge: He won't tell you what he paid, or what you're going to pay.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/17iht-letter17.html


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



901 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 17, 2012 Monday
Late Edition - Final


Amid Discord, Romney Seeks to Sharpen Message on His Agenda


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY; Michael Barbaro, Michael D. Shear and Ashley Parker contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 12


LENGTH: 1066 words


With time dwindling for him to gain an edge in the presidential race and with an outbreak of finger-pointing signaling trouble in his campaign, Mitt Romney plans to begin an offensive this week, his aides said, seeking to give voters a clearer picture of where he wants to take the country.

Amid a clamor of calls from prominent Republicans for Mr. Romney to offer a major policy address to answer voters' continued questions about his plans, his aides said he would present a series of speeches, television commercials and events promoting his five-point economic policy, even as he concentrates on his next big chance to change the race: the debates.

In an interview, Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser, said that in the coming days the campaign would be ''very future oriented'' about ''what a vote for Romney would result in.''

But the discussion of the new tack came as Mr. Romney's campaign was contending with a report in Politico on Sunday night that his campaign was divided over the dominant role of his chief strategist, Stuart Stevens.

In interviews on Sunday night, others close to the campaign said Mr. Stevens's domineering style had at times rankled his colleagues. Campaign aides had also begun grumbling about Mr. Stevens's role in debate practice sessions; they said he frequently interrupted and offered rambling monologues.

But none questioned that Mr. Stevens remains close to and trusted by Mr. Romney. And one senior adviser, who discussed the internal workings of the campaign on the condition of anonymity, dismissed the criticism of Mr. Stevens as coming from outsiders.

''In the inner circle of this campaign, the people who are on the phone calls and really making the decisions, there's not infighting, there just isn't,'' the adviser said.

Other aides expressed concern that the reports of internal discord would erroneously send the signal of a campaign in trouble when, in fact, Mr. Romney remains close to President Obama in polls. But the Politico report and separate interviews suggested that Republicans were concerned that Mr. Romney had yet to provide voters with a clear rationale for why choosing him would be an improvement over Mr. Obama.

The new plan to re-emphasize policy proposals that Mr. Romney introduced last month -- promising ''energy independence'' by 2020 and 12 million new jobs -- is a tacit admission by his campaign that he has yet to flesh out the ''hire Romney'' part of his ''fire Obama/hire Romney'' argument. Some aides expressed relief that the campaign was moving to do so.

The offensive comes after a succession of polls showing Mr. Obama emerging from the party conventions with an edge over Mr. Romney and a modest rise in enthusiasm among registered voters about the direction of the country, despite economic uncertainty.

Those survey results have contributed to anxiety among some of Mr. Romney's donors and helped fuel ''Is Romney losing?'' questions on the Sunday morning interview shows.

As Mr. Romney spent part of his Sunday preparing for the debates, his advisers dismissed concerns about his candidacy as misguided conventional wisdom confined to Washington.

Upon flying to Los Angeles on Sunday night, Mr. Romney walked off the plane and into a waiting S.U.V., saying nothing to reporters waiting nearby.

While most post-convention polls have shown that Mr. Obama got a lift after his nomination in Charlotte, N.C., they also showed that his edge was not statistically significant among those likeliest to vote, making the race effectively even.

Talk of infighting within the Romney headquarters in Boston has been percolating for months, but the report in Politico drew new attention to it and raised questions about Mr. Romney's management of the campaign, which includes advisers who have been with him since his first run for Massachusetts governor, since he entered presidential politics, and others like Mr. Stevens and his partner Russ Schriefer, who have become still more prominent this campaign season. Republicans close to the operation say it is not Mr. Romney's style to dismiss any of his advisers.

In an e-mail, Mr. Stevens wrote that Mr. Romney remains ''very much on track to win'' in November, but referred questions to Gail Gitcho, the campaign's communications director, who wrote, ''I don't have anything for you on Politico story." In messages over the weekend, he pushed back against Republican criticism that Mr. Romney was falling behind and suggested that Mr. Obama's rise after the convention was already waning.

Mr. Stevens has been the main keeper of Mr. Romney's message, and he spent long hours on Mr. Romney's convention speech. An official confirmed the Politico report that Mr. Stevens dismissed much of a draft initially written by Peter Wehner, a former aide to President George W. Bush. That draft had mentioned Afghanistan, the omission of which from Mr. Romney's speech drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.

Mr. Wehner declined to comment on Sunday night.

Several Republicans interviewed on Sunday said concerns about Mr. Romney's trajectory were real, but they added that Mr. Romney held several advantages, including in fund-raising.

''It would be more comforting if Romney were leading in the polls in more swing states than just North Carolina -- people would feel more confident,'' said Fergus Cullen, a former Republican Party chairman in New Hampshire. ''In 2008 we felt our chance slipping away in September, but I don't feel that way at all this time.''

With protests continuing against United States embassies and consulates, both campaigns said the race was more fluid than the growing perception in the capital about Mr. Romney's vulnerability suggests.

Mr. Gillespie, the Romney adviser, said the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., which included testimonials from people Mr. Romney had helped personally, improved his image with undecided voters. ''Clearly, in the convention, we wanted people to learn more about Mitt Romney and who he is and why he can get these things done, and I think we moved the needle in that regard,'' Mr. Gillespie said.

With Mr. Obama facing questions about his plans for a second term, aides said that Mr. Romney would re-emphasize ''The Romney Plan for a Stronger Middle Class'' by spending two days on each of the five elements of that plan: energy independence, education changes, deficit reduction, help for small businesses and freer trade.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/mitt-romney-seeks-to-turn-campaign-focus-to-his-plans.html


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



902 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 17, 2012 Monday


A Shift in Strategy in Romney's Latest Ads


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 540 words



HIGHLIGHT: New TV ads from Mitt Romney's campaign focus on specific ideas to revive the economy, create jobs and reduce the nation's long-term debt, with less emphasis on assailing President Obama. 


New ads by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign began running Monday as part of a shift in strategy to focus more on the his specific ideas to revive the economy, create jobs and reduce the nation's long-term debt.

In one ad, Mr. Romney promises a stronger middle class by improving foreign trade with a "crackdown on cheaters like China" and cutting the federal deficit.

"You've got to stop spending more money than we take in," Mr. Romney says in the ad, which does not mention or directly criticize President Obama. In the ad, called "The Romney Plan," Mr. Romney also pledges to create 12 million new jobs with a focus on small business.

A second ad is tougher on Mr. Obama, accusing his administration of failing American families by allowing the nation's debt to skyrocket. In the ad, Mr. Romney says that the country has "a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in."

Both ads are part of a new effort by Mr. Romney's campaign to refocus their messagein the wake of slumping poll numbers, criticism from Republican party officials and discord inside the campaign's headquarters in Boston.

The ads emphasize making the positive case for Mr. Romney's presidency. For much of the campaign, the Republican candidate has focused more on attacking Mr. Obama's record in office. But strategists now believe the campaign must offer voters more explanation about how things will change if Mr. Romney wins the White House.

Mr. Romney plans to continue his focus on that message during a speech on Monday to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, in Los Angeles. According to excerpts released by the campaign, Mr. Romney plans to echo his new ads by pledging to balance the federal budget, shift spending responsibility to the states and reduce federal employment by 10 percent through attrition.

"These things combined will reduce spending by $500 billion a year by the end of my first term," Mr. Romney is expected to say, according to the excerpts.

The speech to the Hispanic group is an attempt by Mr. Romney's campaign to reach out to a demographic group that has traditionally favored Democrats. In his speech, however, Mr. Romney plans to focus more on his overall plans for the economy than on the specific issues of concern to Latinos.

He will, however, note that the unemployment rate among Hispanics is higher than the overall national rate. And he will note the need to "permanently fix our immigration system," without offering specific suggestions for how he would break the ideological logjam in Washington over the contentious issue.

"I believe we can all agree that what we need are fair and enforceable immigration laws that will stem the flow of illegal immigration, while strengthening legal immigration," he is expected to say, according to the excerpts.

Mr. Obama's campaign offered a sarcastic video Monday in anticipation of Mr. Romney's speech to the Hispanic group. The video, titled "Mitt Romney: Extreme Makeover Latino Edition," suggests that the Republican candidate is trying to paper over his "extreme" views about immigration with more moderate rhetoric.

"Mitt Romney is faced with one of his most implausible makeovers yet," the video says. "Making his extreme policies seem appealing to Latino voters."


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



903 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 17, 2012 Monday


Romney Aide Concedes Campaign Has Been Short on Specifics


BYLINE: MICHAEL D. SHEAR


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1161 words



HIGHLIGHT: The Romney campaign plans a more positive message highlighting some of the candidate's positions on important issues.


7:27 p.m. | Updated A top strategist for Mitt Romney conceded Monday that the campaign has not provided enough specifics about the candidate's vision for the country and pledged a renewed effort in the last 50 days of the race to better communicate with voters.

Ed Gillespie, a veteran Republican operative who is advising Mr. Romney, told reporters that voters were demanding more specifics from the campaign on the economy, foreign policy and energy concerns. He said the revamped approach will focus on communicating better about the candidate's existing ideas rather than providing new ones.

"We are not rolling out new policy," Mr. Gillespie said, "so much as we are making sure people understand that when we say we can do these things, here's how we are going to get them done and these are the specifics."

For months, Mr. Romney's central strategy has been to attack President Obama's leadership and his handling of the economy. Aides have long said they believe the campaign will be a referendum by voters on their dissatisfaction with the president and the direction of the faltering economy.

But Mr. Gillespie said that recent polling done by the campaign suggested that voters were increasingly tuning into the campaign now and were eager to hear more from Mr. Romney about his own plans.

"What we have found is that people want to hear a little more of that," Mr. Gillespie said. "We think there's a demand out there."

The shift in approach comes amid increasing criticism from Republicans outside the campaign and polls showing Mr. Romney slipping in key swing states. An article in PoliticoSunday night detailed carping among Mr. Romney's campaign advisers about who is to blame, with much of the finger-pointing aimed at Stuart Stevens, the top strategist for the campaign.

Conservative supporters of Mr. Romney's campaign have increasingly voiced concern that the campaign has been too vague in its promises to voters and risks offering a bland alternative that will not succeed in November.

William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote last week that Mr. Romney must "speak up" on the specifics that would animate his presidency or risk losing.

"When a challenger merely appeals to disappointment with the incumbent and tries to reassure voters he's not too bad an alternative, that isn't generally a formula for victory," Mr. Kristol wrote. "Mike Dukakis lost."

John Podhoretz, a conservative commentator, wrote in The New York Post that: "Romney & Co. are wrong if they think negative feelings toward Obama are sufficient to motivate their voters. These people would like very much to believe in their candidate. That's not happening now."

Mr. Gillespie did not directly address Mr. Stevens or the late-in-the-game campaign squabbling inside and outside of the Boston headquarters. And he said the timing of the change in strategy was partly a natural evolution now that the election is drawing near and more voters are paying attention.

But he made clear that the campaign views the coming period as the time for a "new emphasis and renewed emphasis" on Mr. Romney's approach to governing.

As examples, Mr. Gillespie said that in a speech in California Monday, Mr. Romney would highlight previous proposals to limit the growth in federal programs and reduce the federal work force that will reduce spending by $500 billion in four years. The speech will be before the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles.

Asked for examples of other specifics, Mr. Gillespie said the campaign would underscore its promise to be energy independent by the year 2020 by repeating Mr. Romney's pledge to approve the Keystone oil pipeline, allow drilling off the coast of Virginia and lift the moratorium on oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The timing is right at this moment to reinforce the specifics," Mr. Gillespie said.

The approach will involve new stump speeches by Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mr. Gillespie said.

In Los Angeles on Monday, Mr. Romney did not deliver an entirely new speech, but it had a different emphasis. The candidate, who usually
devotes much of his standard stump speech to a lengthy indictment of Mr. Obama's record, instead focused heavily on his plans to
eliminate government spending in Los Angeles. He outlined his proposal to cut federal subsidies for Amtrak, the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation,and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. (The ideas are not new for Mr.
Romney, but they rarely make their way into his remarks.)

However Mr. Romney still withheld many key details. When explaining his plan to reduce the size of the federal government by $500 billion
a year, he vowed to cut employment by 10 percent through attrition and eliminate or combine agencies, but did not say how many or identify
which.

Sounding a familiar theme, Mr. Romney declared that "the President has put us on the road to Greece. I will put us back on the road to a
stronger America, one which stops spending more than we take in."

In his conference call with reporters, Mr. Gillespie said the new approach would also involve background papers and new ads, some of which began running on Monday.

In one new ad the campaign released Monday morning, Mr. Romney promises he would make a stronger middle class by improving foreign trade with a "crackdown on cheaters like China" and cutting the federal deficit.

"You've got to stop spending more money than we take in," Mr. Romney says in the ad, which does not mention or directly criticize Mr. Obama. In the ad, called "The Romney Plan," Mr. Romney also pledges to create 12 million new jobs with a focus on small business.

That ad, and another emphasizing the growth in the nation's debt, are intended to make the case for Mr. Romney taking over in the White House.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama's campaign said the ads would not convince voters that Mr. Romney's prescriptions for the country are better than the ones that Mr. Obama has been following for the past several years.

"The American people have no reason to believe Mitt Romney would reduce the deficit or strengthen the middle class - it's not what he did as governor and it's not what he's proposing to do as president," said Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign.

After the speech in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon, Mr. Romney's campaign schedule remains light for the rest of the week. There is a planned fund-raiser in Los Angeles Monday night, and Mr. Romney has no public events on Tuesday. He is scheduled to have only a single public event on each day later in the week, though the campaign could still add events.

On Sunday, Mr. Romney had planned an event in Colorado, a critical swing state where Republicans had hoped to deny the president a repeat victory. But a small plane crash at the airport where Mr. Romney was scheduled to land forced the event to be canceled.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting.


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



904 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 17, 2012 Monday


Filing Trade Suit, Obama Raps Romney on China


BYLINE: MARK LANDLER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1062 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama, under renewed fire from Mitt Romney for not standing up to China on behalf of American workers, used a rally in this battleground state to announce a new trade case against Beijing.


CINCINNATI - President Obama, under renewed fire from Mitt Romney for not standing up to China on behalf of American workers, used a rally in this battleground state on Monday to announce a new trade case against Beijing. He said it was Mr. Romney who had sent jobs to China through his zealous practice of outsourcing at Bain Capital.

After a week of anti-American violence in the Middle East threw Mr. Romney off stride and left Mr. Obama potentially vulnerable, the shift to China put the presidential campaign and both candidates back on familiar ground, allowing each to try out new lines to showcase their toughness and caricature the fecklessness of their opponent.

"My opponent has been running around Ohio claiming he's going to roll up his sleeves and he's going take the fight to China," the president said to a crowd of 4,500 at a hillside park here. "Here's the thing: his experience has been owning companies that were called pioneers in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China."

"Ohio," the president declared, "you can't stand up to China when all you've done is send them our jobs."

Mr. Obama, deploying the full powers of incumbency, announced that the United States would file a broad lawsuit against China at the World Trade Organization, charging that it subsidizes its auto and auto parts industries to the detriment of American manufacturers.

It is the latest in a string of trade actions against China taken by the Obama administration, and the second announced by the president on the eve of a campaign visit to Ohio, where the auto parts industry employs 52,400 people. In July - just before he flew to Toledo, home of a Jeep Wrangler factory - the White House filed a complaint against Beijing for levying $3.3 billion in duties on American automobiles.

The White House insisted that the lawsuit announced on Monday was "months in the making," though it was hardly shy about promoting its campaign benefits.

"It's not as if because we're in the midst of an election that we should wait until next year to take these steps on behalf of American workers," Josh Earnest, the deputy press secretary, said.

Mr. Romney fired back even before Mr. Obama spoke, accusing him of doing "too little, too late" to curb China's unfair trade practices. The latest trade case, Mr. Romney said, was little more than a campaign stunt, failing to compensate for his unwillingness to take other actions, like labeling China a currency manipulator.

"President Obama's credibility on this issue has long since vanished," Mr. Romney declared in a statement. "I will not wait until the last months of my presidency to stand up to China, or do so only when votes are at stake."

The Obama and Romney campaigns also unveiled tit-for-tat China commercials - Mr. Romney's accusing the president of repeatedly passing up chances to get tough on Beijing, and Mr. Obama's accusing his challenger of outsourcing jobs to China, through his work at Bain Capital, and for having investments in Chinese companies.

Bashing China is a tried-and-true campaign strategy for both parties, particularly in swing states like Ohio, where a heavy loss of manufacturing jobs has coincided with a surge of Chinese-made auto parts into the United States.

For Mr. Obama, however, it is a notable shift from 2008, when he modulated his anti-China remarks, in part because the job market was not as central an issue in that election and in part because his foreign policy advisers warned him that if he made China a punching bag, he would spend months as president repairing the damage.

Once in office, Mr. Obama became frustrated by what he views as China's refusal to play by the rules, according to current and former officials. In the fall of 2009, he imposed a tariff on China over its dumping of tires into the American market. This was by far the most conspicuous of a stream of trade actions; before this year, most of the cases were fairly obscure, covering goods like flat-rolled steel and chicken broilers.

"We've brought more trade cases against China in one term than the previous administration did in two - and every case we've brought that's been decided, we won," Mr. Obama said.

Speaking of the latest case, he said, "These are subsidies that directly harm working men and women on the assembly lines in Ohio and Michigan and across the Midwest." He added, "It's not right. It's against the rules, and we will not let it stand."

Mr. Obama noted that Mr. Romney had warned that the tire case would be bad for the country and for American workers - a charge he made in his book "No Apologies." Instead, the president claimed, it created more than 1,000 jobs.

Mr. Romney is training a spotlight on another type of enforcement in which he says Mr. Obama is lacking: labeling China as a currency manipulator for keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially undervalued. In his campaign ad, a narrator declares: "Seven times Obama could have stopped China's cheating. Seven times he refused."

The Treasury Department has consistently declined to designate China for manipulation. Senior officials argue that to do so would only make matters worse, by provoking a nationalist backlash that could force the Chinese authorities to tighten their currency controls again. They note that after quiet but persistent diplomacy by American officials, China began relaxing the controls in 2010, and the currency has risen modestly against the dollar.

Mr. Romney, however, has declared that he would label China a manipulator on his first day in office - a threat that rattles many free-trade proponents, who note that the George W. Bush administration also declined to go that route. Mr. Romney also says he would be far tougher than Mr. Obama on issues like intellectual property rights.

Mr. Obama repeated his charge that Mr. Romney pioneered outsourcing at Bain Capital - even repeating the word "pioneer," lest anyone miss the point. But independent fact-checking groups have taken issue with that word because it implies that Bain was ahead of the curve in outsourcing, when the trend was already well established.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.



LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



905 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 17, 2012 Monday


'Super PAC' Makes Some Intriguing Bets on Romney


BYLINE: SARAH WHEATON


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 377 words



HIGHLIGHT: An outside group believes Mitt Romney has a chance to win two states Barack Obama captured in 2008.


Mitt Romney may have had a bad run in polls in recent weeks, but he still has supporters who are bullish about his chances in some states that President Obama won handily in 2008.

Restore Our Future, the "super PAC" supporting Mr. Romney, is investing $1.5 million on ads in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to a media buyer who monitors spending in battleground states.

The investment suggests that for all the advantages Mr. Obama has had coming out of the nominating conventions, Mr. Romney can rely on one clear advantage he has over Democrats: outside groups with much more money to spend supporting his candidacy and tactically placing their bets in states where they believe he has a chance to win.

Restore Our Future's $720,000 investment in Michigan is particularly remarkable. Mr. Romney's campaign and his other allies seem to have all but given up on the state, even though the candidate grew up there and his father, George Romney, was once governor. The Romney campaign itself, which is running state-specific spots in those states it ostensibly considers to be the most in play, left Michigan off that list.

Other outside groups that back Mr. Romney, including American Crossroads, have also stopped advertising in Michigan.

Despite Mr. Romney's ties to the state, he has struggled to get beyond his opposition to the auto bailout, and election forecasters widely view the state as likely to go for Mr. Obama, who won in Michigan by 16 percentage points in 2008.

A spokeswoman for Restore Our Future declined to comment, saying the super PAC does not address ad purchases that have not been finalized. But the ability of super PACs to raise and spend freely gives them flexibility to invest in some long shots. And it could also provoke the Obama campaign to spend some precious ad dollars on a state it considers relatively safe.

In Wisconsin, Restore Our Future's ad purchase of $820,000, according to the buyer, is an amplification of the Romney campaign's efforts. After initially investing in eight states after the convention, the Romney camp bought ad time in a ninth, Wisconsin, to much fanfare. The campaign believes the selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan, from Wisconsin, as Mr. Romney's running mate has improved the ticket's chances there.


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



906 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 17, 2012 Monday
FINAL EDITION


Obama ad: We're better off than in '08


BYLINE: Richard Wolf, @richardjwolf, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A


LENGTH: 605 words


President Obama's latest campaign ad favorably compares his economic record to what he inherited and contrasts his economic plan with the Republican alternative. Call it a two-fer -- with some poetic license.

Script

Announcer: He keeps saying it.

Mitt Romney: This president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office.

Announcer: Well, here's where we were in 2008.

TV broadcasts: Worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. American workers were laid off in numbers not seen in over three decades.

Announcer: And here's where we are today: 30 months of private-sector job growth, creating 4.6 million new jobs. We're not there yet. But the real question is: Whose plan is better for you? The president's plan asks millionaires to pay a little more to help invest in a strong middle class, clean energy, and cut the deficit. Mitt Romney's plan? A new $250,000 tax break for multimillionaires. Roll back regulations on the banks that cratered the economy. And raise taxes on the middle class.

Bill Clinton: They want to go back to the same old policies that got us in trouble in the first place.

Obama: We're not going back, we are moving forward.

Announcer: Forward.

Visuals

The ad begins with Romney making his charge. To exemplify the past, it shows scenes from Wall Street during the financial collapse. To exemplify the present, it shows workers exiting a subway, presumably on the way to or from work, and a pleasant suburban street.

Then the contrast switches to the wealthy, portrayed with mansions and jumbo jets, and the middle class, seen first greeting Obama and later at home, with an overlay warning of a $2,000 tax increase under Romney.

At the end, Clinton and Obama are seen giving their speeches at the Democratic convention earlier this month.

Analysis

The 60-second ad tries to drive home two points: Obama has made things better, and Romney would make things worse. The case is well made, but with a few corners cut.

In making the claim that the president has overseen "4.6 million new jobs," the ad focuses only on private sector gains since March 2010, when U.S. employment hit its low point. If public employee layoffs are included, the job growth slips to 4.1 million. And since January 2009 when Obama took office, the economy is still down 261,000 jobs.

On the campaign trail, Romney uses a different set of statistics, including an unemployment rate that has remained above 8% and a national debt that just topped $16 trillion.

The ad's assertion that Obama would have the wealthy "pay a little more" depends on your definition of "little." The top income tax rate would return to 39.6% from 35%. That translates into nearly $100,000 more on $2 million in taxable income.

And the allegation that Romney would cut multimillionaires' taxes by $250,000 and raise taxes by $2,000 on the middle class is based on a study by the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan think tank.

However, the center didn't score Romney's plan because it lacks specifics. Instead, it took his proposed tax cuts and projected what would happen if tax breaks were reduced to prevent the deficit from rising.

Using Clinton at the end is a no-brainer. His favorable rating in the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll was 69%, the highest it has ever been. Obama's, by contrast, was at 53%. No wonder a Clinton ad from Aug. 23 remains on the air, and Clinton campaigned for Obama last week in Florida.

The ad is running in the seven states deemed closest by the campaign: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. Notably, it's not running in North Carolina, where Romney had a small lead in recent polls.


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



907 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 17, 2012 Monday 9:43 PM EST


Romney dismisses talk of campaign turmoil;
The GOP presidential nominee tells Telemundo: "My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together."


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 616 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

How Mitt Romney lost on Libya - in 1 chart

Rasmussen: The GOP's cure for the common poll

Does President Obama have a Wisconsin problem?

When campaigns fight with themselves (a brief history)

Mitt Romney's rock and hard place problem

Outside campaign cash worries voters

The story Mitt Romney hoped to avoid - and how his campaign can get beyond it

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* In an interview with Telemundo, Mitt Romney sought to downplay a report about campaign turmoil, saying "I've got a terrific campaign. My senior campaign people work extraordinarily well together. I work well with them." Romney added: "frankly - these process stories" detract "from what's really of concern to the American people."

* Video has surfaced of Romney at a fundraiser saying, "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. ... "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

* At a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Romney said he is "convinced that the Republican Party is the rightful home of Hispanic Americans."

* Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said in an interview that he won't campaign for Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), who defeated him in a May primary.

* The subject of Sen. Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) first TV ad is China, and her effort to curb currency manipulation and unfair trade violations. Stabenow's opponent, former congressman Pete Hoekstra (R), released an ad that appeared to reference China during the Super Bowl. That spot was widely panned for its use of Asian stereotypes.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (Wis.) regularly slams Obama for dreaming up automatic spending cuts set to hit the Pentagon next year.But Ryan himself proposed in 2010 to enforce spending caps with automatic cuts that would have affected the Pentagon.

* An internal poll conducted for former congresswoman Heather Wilson's (R) New Mexico Senate campaign shows Rep. Martin Heinrich (D) leading her, 46 percent to 41 percent. It's never a good sign when a campaign releases a poll showing that it is behind.

* Democrats are slamming a new ad from former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle (R) which is meant to improve the Republican's cross-party appeal. The ad features Democrats who support Lingle - though Rep. Mazie Hirono's (D) campaign said that the commercial includes seven out of eight people with "established Republican ties."

* A new Pew Research Center poll offers fresh evidence that Mitt Romney's criticism of the Obama administration following violent protests at diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt didn't help his cause. Among Americans who have followed the overseas developments, just 26 percent approve of Romney's comments on the situation, while 45 percent approve of President Obama's handling of the situation. Among independents, the situation is similar - 44 percent approved of Obama's handling while just 23 percent approved of Romney's comments.

* Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine is up with a new Spanish language TV ad touting his positions on jobs, immigration reform, and education.

THE FIX MIX:

When life gives you lemons...

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



908 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 17, 2012 Monday 8:31 PM EST


The story Mitt Romney hoped to avoid - and how his campaign can get beyond it;
Reports of infighting within the Romney campaign are exactly what this uber-disciplined effort had done well to avoid up to this point.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 982 words


For the better part of the last 18 months, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has taken lots (and lots) of criticism. He's too wooden. He's not conservative enough. He's not quick on his feet. He should be winning (but isn't).

Through it all, the Romney campaign's inner circle stayed tight, refusing to engage in the sort of backbiting and butt-covering by paid political professionals that plagued his 2008 bid for president and is the hallmark of virtually every losing campaign - Democratic or Republican - in history.

That unity of purpose - no leaks, no drama, just winning - was expressly modeled after the structure put in place by then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. Obama's political success, many senior advisers to Romney believed, was due in no small part to the fact that his campaign refused to play the inside-Washington, this-one-doesn't-like-that-one game.

On Sunday that plan ended, as the Romney campaign came face-to-face with just the story it was hoping to avoid: a report in Politico of dissension within the campaign ranks - much of it directed at media consultant and Romney political svengali Stuart Stevens.

The Romney campaign offered no immediate comment on the story - perhaps believing that saying anything would add fuel to a fire it was much more interested in letting die. Others not authorized to speak on the record insisted that the story accurately portrayed the griping of a handful of people outside of what remains a close-knit political inner circle.

"Rest assured: we really don't have infighting in our inner circle and with Mitt," said one senior Romney aide. "This is just outer-ring stuff."

Regardless, the story is sure to draw scads of media attention, as campaign infighting narratives are something close to catnip for cable television (and political blogs). And, a focus on whether there is something deeply wrong with the Romney campaign and how it functions is not the sort of message his side wants/needs to be pushing with 50 days left until Election Day.

"Public backstabbing with two months to go is shameful," said Curt Anderson, a Republican media consultant who worked on Romney's 2008 campaign but is not involved this time. "I checked my calendar to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep and awaken a month later. Usually this kind of stuff comes out in late October."

Anderson, as well as several other unaligned Republican strategists The Fix spoke with late Sunday, insisted however that no matter the negative publicity that the Politico story will generate among the political chattering class, that it would likely do little to alter the overall dynamic of the race.

"This race is close," said Anderson. "Obama may have a slight edge, but it is slight. The press and the insiders have prematurely decided this election, [but] the voters are not on board with that analysis at this point, and they get to decide."

Alex Castellanos, another consultant who advised Romney in 2008 but is not doing so in 2012, offered a simple solution to move beyond the story.

"It's easy, the same as football," said Castellanos, "Put on your pads and hit somebody."

NRSC starts spending in Indiana: The Senate map is getting bigger, after Republicans this weekend spent their first money defending Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-Ind.) seat in Indiana.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is spending $650,000 on a one-week ad buy.

Democrats have new hope in the race now that Lugar lost his primary; a series of Demcoratic polls - and a Chamber of Commerce poll - have shown the race neck and neck.

Rep. Joe Donnelly's (D-Ind.) campaign will release another poll Monday showing him leading state Treasurer Richard Mourdock 45 percent to 42 percent. The Global Strategy Group poll is Donnelly's best showing in any poll to date.

Indiana is the second state where the national committees have been forced to plug money into a seat they had hoped would be safe. Democrats last week spent their first money defending an open seat in blue Connecticut.

Fixbits:

Romney is out with a new TV ad pitching his economic plan to the middle class, while another compares falling median household incomes to the rise in the national debt.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has asked a court to end the city's teachers strike, as the teachers have declined to sign off on a tentative deal that would put them back to work.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says "We The People" wasn't written with African-Americans in mind.

Former president Bill Clinton will make an appearance in Haiti today, delivering remarks at the Center for Investment Facilitation in Port-au-Prince.

A new poll from the Western New England University Polling Institute shows Elizabeth Warren (D) leading Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) by six points - a far better picture for Democrats than any other recent poll. Other polls of late had shown the race tilting toward Brown.

Christine O'Donnell (R) says she is considering another Senate campaign in Delaware in 2014. She would be going for a rematch with Sen. Chris Coons (D), who beat her by 17 points in a 2010 special election.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is up with the first ad of his 2012 campaign.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says Democrats have an "excellent" chance to win back the majority this year.

Must-reads:

"Inside the campaign: How Mitt Romney stumbled" - Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei, Politico

"Companies Thompson helps oversee have run into trouble" - Cary Spivak, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"Pa.'s new voter ID law sends non-drivers on a bureaucratic journey" - Ann Gerhart, Washington Post

"The B61 bomb: A case study in costs and needs" - Dana Priest, Washington Post

"Do presidential debates really matter?" - John Sides, Washington Monthly

"Will Obama win in November? Wide gap between preference and prediction." - Chris Cillizza, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



909 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 17, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


The Fix's week in politics The Fix's week in politics


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 562 words


QUOTE OF THE WEEK "All you need to know about the differences between the president and myself is that I'm sitting there smoking a cigarette, drinking merlot, and I look across the table and here is the president of the United States drinking iced tea and chomping on Nicorette."

- House Speaker John Boehner,quoted in the new book by longtime Washington Post reporter and editor Bob Woodward, "The Price of Politics."

BY THE NUMBERS

1 The number of former aides to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) who signed on to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2014 reelection campaign last week. Jesse Benton, who will be working for McConnell (Ky.), was the chief strategist on the Texas congressman's presidential campaign, which was a far cry from the establishment wing of the GOP that McConnell represents. But McConnell's a survivor who is laying the groundwork early to prevent a primary defeat at the hands of a conservative challenger. After all, it was in McConnell's own back yard that now-Sen. Rand Paul (R) defeated a candidate backed by the minority leader just two years ago.

2 The number of TV ads Senate challenger Elizabeth Warren released in Massachusetts last week, mainly featuring supporters promoting her candidacy. After a summer full of spots primarily highlighting the Democrat pitching her own candidacy, Warren rebooted her ad strategy with commercials that let others do much of the talking for her. It's a shift that could help Warren seize back some of the momentum against Sen. Scott Brown (R), but also a sign that things weren't working as well as she had planned.

$114 million President Obama's August fundraising haul, a figure that bested Mitt Romney's month by $2.4 million. For the first time in four months, Obama outraised his Republican challenger. And with GOP-aligned outside groups outspending Democratic ones, the president will need a couple more months like August as the campaign season approaches its stretch run.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS

Mitt Romney. The GOP presidential candidate began the week with an

ill-timed attack on the Obama administration's posture toward protests in the Middle East (soon after, the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed). Then a series of polls showed Obama improving his standing. And then Romney capped off the week with some odd comments in a TV interview, including calling himself a "Snooki fan" and saying his guilty

pleasure is "peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk." So far, Romney seems to struggle in talking about anything other than the economy.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS

They got some good news on the Senate front. National Democrats were forced to launch and ad buy in Connecticut after polls showed Republican Linda McMahon leading (which suggests the blue state is now

in play). Also, Massachusetts Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren overhauled her advertising strategy in a tacit acknowledgment of her lack of traction against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). And finally, former South Dakota governor Mike Rounds (R) launched an exploratory committee for 2014, landing the GOP a top potential recruit and reinforcing the fact that it will have another great chance to pick up seats two years from now.

- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



910 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 17, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Panel discussion to focus on best practices for secure cloud use


SECTION: ; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 490 words


The Indus Entrepreneurs D.C. is hosting a panel discussion on "Best Practices in Securing the Cloud" on Tuesday.

Speakers include Yuvi Kochar, chief technology officer of The Washington Post. Co.; Michael Brown, chief technology officer of Reston-based ComScore; Brian Cobb, managing vice president for IT and data center management, McLean-based Capital One; Chris Grady, chief executive officer, Lanham-based Clear Government Solutions; and Max Peterson, director and general manger for Herndon-based Amazon Web Services Worldwide Public Sector Partners, Capture and Contracts.

The event begins at 6 p.m. at Capital One, 1680 Capital One Dr., McLean. $10-$25 for members, $35 for everyone else.

Other events of note Tuesday, Sept. 18

The first of five workshops on marketing communications offered by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority is to focus on conducting a strength, weakness/limitations, opportunities and threats analysis. The workshop begins at 7:30 a.m. at the FCEDA's offices at 8300 Boone Blvd., Suite 450, Tysons Corner. Free.

The French-American Chamber of Commerceis hosting Rohini Anand, global chief diversity officer at Gaithersburg-based Sodexho; Harold C. Alford, president and chief executive of the District-based National Black Chamber of Commerce; and Suzanne Richards, vice president of the office of diversity and inclusion at District-based Freddie Mac, who are to talk about "Empowering Your Business Through Workforce Diversity." The event begins at 6 p.m. $10 for members, $20 for everyone else.

Wednesday, Sept. 19

The Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerceis holding its fifth annual Skeet, Scotch & Cigars outing for senior executives. The event starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Bull Run Shooting Center, 7700 Bull Run Dr., Centerville. $165 for members, $185 for everyone else.

Thursday, Sept. 20

The D.C. Chamber of Commerceis to host Leila Aridi Afas, director for export promotion at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and Chuck Cooper, vice president for congressional and public affairs at the Millennium Challenge Corp., who are to talk about public sector export opportunities. The event begins at 9 a.m. at the chamber's offices at 506 9th St. NW. Free.

The Washington International Trade Association will host surrogates from the Mitt Romney and President Obama campaigns to talk about "Trade Policy in the Next Administration: How Would Romney and Obama Differ?" The event begins at 9 a.m. in the Rotunda Room, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. $15-$30 for members, $45 for everyone else.

The Fairfax County Chamber of Commerceis hosting a debate between Senate candidates George Allen(R) and Tim Kaine(D). The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Capitol One Conference Center, 1680 Capital One Dr., McLean. $150 for members, $250 for everyone else.

- Shawn Selby


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



911 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 17, 2012 Monday 5:36 PM EST


Billionaire Ricketts to spend $10 million for GOP;
Wealthy investor planning expensive ad campaign to help GOP candidates.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 165 words


Billionaire investor Joe Ricketts, who is bankrolling his own super PAC, plans to be a big part of the fall ad war on the side of Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans. The Wall Street Journal:  

Joe Ricketts, the founder of what became online brokerage TD Ameritrade Inc., plans to spend $10 million airing ads supporting GOP nominee Mitt Romney and another $2 million to help Republicans running for Congress.

The ads will begin airing this week. The ads stack up as one of the biggest electioneering efforts by an individual in the 2012 election. National cable television spots will feature disaffected Obama supporters talking about why they plan to support Mr. Romney.

Ricketts was the subject of controversy earlier this year when theNew York Times reported he was considering a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at tying President Obama to controversial comments made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



912 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 17, 2012 Monday 4:22 PM EST


Romney's ad on manufacturing dominance and 'China's cheating';
An ad from the GOP presidential nominee suggests Chinese manufacturing now dwarfs that of the U.S. and that the president has refused to stop 'China's cheating.' We checked the facts.


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 1651 words


"Under Obama, we've lost over half a million manufacturing jobs. And for the first time, China is beating us. Seven times, Obama could have stopped China's cheating; seven times, he refused."

- Narration from Romney campaign ad

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney focused much of his attention last week on manufacturing jobs and President Obama's trade policy toward China. His campaign released an ad suggesting that U.S. manufacturing as a share of global output has shriveled in comparison with that of its Asian trading partner. The video also said the current administration has refused to stop China's cheating.

Let's take a look at the facts to determine whether those claims are true.

The Facts

The Romney campaign ad features a pair of bar graphs supposedly representing U.S. vs. Chinese shares of world manufacturing during Obama's tenure in the White House. The illustrations suggest a giant shift in output between the two nations since the president took office in 2009.

To prove its claims about manufacturing output, the Romney campaign pointed us to a set of U.N. numbers on global manufacturing compiled by the British Parliament. Sure enough, China increased its share of the world total by 25 percent. (It claimed the top spot in 2011, bumping the U.S. from a perch it had held for 110 years).

Still, the Romney campaign's illustrations are totally out of proportion. The U.N. numbers show that U.S. manufacturing represented 18.5 percent of world output in 2008, compared to 15.1 percent for China.

That's not what the graphs indicate.

We translated the U.N. numbers into brick layers, since that's the metric the Romney campaign used. Based on the true figures, we should see 14 layers of brick for the U.S. and 11 for China. But the ad shows 14 for the U.S. and eight for China - far from accurate.

If the illustrations were properly scaled, they would show Chinese manufacturing at 82 percent of U.S. output in 2008. Instead, they put Chinese manufacturing at just over half of U.S. output that year, overstating the U.S. advantage at the time Obama took office.

The bar graphs eventually change, showing U.S. output shrinking to half of China's by 2010 - it uses eight brick layers to 16 for the two countries, respectively. This is a gross misrepresentation of the real shift. The U.S. share of global output in 2010 was actually 96 percent of Chinese manufacturing. An accurate graphic would have shown about 15 layers of brick for the U.S. next to 16 layers for China.

We also noticed that the ad doesn't compare apples to apples when talking about the shift in shares of global manufacturing. Instead, it mentions output versus jobs - a 25 percent rise in China's share of global output compared to a loss of 582,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Looking at output percentages, the U.S. dropped less than 2 percent, while the China increased 25 percent. This isn't as dramatic as it sounds, and it's also misleading.

The focus should be on percentage points instead of percentage. In that respect, the U.S. share of global output fell just .3 percentage points while the Chinese share rose 3.8 percentage points.

Overall, China's slice of global production has risen quite a bit, but the U.S. has remained roughly steady. This shows that China's rise doesn't necessarily have to result in a drop for the U.S.

Just to be clear, this is what we're looking at:

We should point out that U.S. output increased by .9 percentage points in 2009, which is further evidence that the nation held its own, despite minor fluctuations during the early part of Obama's term.

Moreover, a general downward trend in U.S. manufacturing started before Obama entered the White House. The U.S. share of global output dropped from 26 percent to 18.5 percent during President George W. Bush's eight years in office. Meanwhile, the Chinese share of global output jumped from 8.3 percent to 15.1 percent during that same period.

Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics support the Romney campaign's claim about jobs lost in manufacturing. Net domestic employment in that sector has dropped by 879,000 workers since December 2008, although the level has generally risen since April 2010. But again, this is comparing apples to oranges.

The Romney ad claims that Obama refused seven times to stop China from cheating. This refers to the current administration's decisions not to label the Asian nation as a currency manipulator.

American officials have long said that China keeps its currency, the yuan, artificially low - generally undervalued by 20 percent to 30 percent against the dollar - to give its exports an advantage on the world market.

The Treasury Department has two opportunities every year to apply the currency manipulator label to China - or any other nation - when the agency submits its mandatory Semiannual Report on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policy to Congress.

The Obama administration has opted against using the currency manipulator label, instead using diplomacy to address China's policy, as did previous administrations. In 2011, Chinese President Hu Jintao promised to implement exchange-rate reform, and the value of the yuan appreciated for a short while before dropping again this year.

The currency manipulator label is not the only trade-enforcement tool at the government's disposal. The Obama administration has leaned on less-sweeping measures so far, filing seven World Trade Organization complaints against China to help level the playing field for U.S. exports of automobiles, rare-earth minerals, solar panels, wind turbines, poultry, tires and music.

Romney campaign spokeswoman Michele Davis said the Obama administration's WTO complaints represent a piecemeal approach and that "the impacts are not comparable" to labeling China as a currency manipulator. "A product-by-product approach is never going to affect the systematic imbalance," she said. "It doesn't address the problem with the entire playing field."

It's worth pointing out that applying the currency manipulator label to China could heighten tensions between the U.S. and its Asian trading partner and affect unity between the two nations in dealing with such issues as Iran's nuclear ambitions.

As former Bush White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten noted recently about Romney's tough language: "If history is a guide, such sharp campaign rhetoric is blunted by the reality of governing."

Indeed, talking tough about China is standard campaign rhetoric for candidates in a presidential campaign. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) pledged to crack down on China's currency ma­nipu­la­tion during his run in the2004 election, and Obama vowed to do the same during his 2008 bid, specifically promising, "China must stop manipulating its currency because it's not fair to American manufacturers, it's not fair to you, and we are going to change it when I am president."

Obama hasn't gone so far as to label China a currency manipulator, but neither did his predecessor. As noted in a 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service, "The George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations have had many conversations with China about exchange rate issues. Nonetheless, their officials were careful never to say publicly that China was manipulating its currency in violation of IMF rules."

 Romney's bellicose talk about China is belied somewhat by the long association he has had with the country through the company he founded, Bain Capital. The private equity firm began major direct and indirect investments in China while Romney was still chief executive.

For example, in the early 1990s, Bain acquired a U.S. bicycle manufacturer that relied on lower-cost Chinese parts and labor to produce some of its specialty and retail bikes. The company, GT Bicycles, expanded its U.S. workforce during the years Bain owned it, in part because it was able to take advantage of lower-cost labor in China, Taiwan and other foreign countries.

When other leading U.S. bike manufacturers sought unfair trade sanctions against China for providing below-market bikes, GT was among those opposing the proposed sanctions, according to a document from the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Today, the U.S. bike manufacturing sector has withered. There are many reasons for its decline, but some of the industry's longtime advocates blame cheap imports from China.

Davis said the GT case is irrelevant to Romney's position because the company opposed sanctions, whereas Romney has promised to address currency policy. "Currency is a much bigger obstacle to tackle than these issues with one type of product or one company," she said.

The Pinocchio Test

Romney's campaign is correct that the U.S. has lost more than half a million manufacturing jobs and that China claims a greater share of global output than any other nation. But the ad's inaccurate bar graphs vastly exaggerate the shift that has taken place - they simply don't represent the true numbers.

As for the notion that Obama refused to stop China's cheating, the ad ignores seven complaints filed by the current administration to protect various U.S. industries from unfair trade practices by the Asian nation.

Romney has promised to punish China with the currency manipulator label, while Obama has refrained from doing this. But it's not like the current administration hasn't taken action at all to protect U.S. trade interests.

On balance, the GOP presidential nominee earns two Pinocchios for a campaign ad that features bogus graphics and for statements that ignore a significant part of Obama's trade policy toward China.

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



913 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 17, 2012 Monday 1:16 PM EST


Ad watch: Mitt Romney's income and debt argument;
Mitt Romney's answer to the "are you better off" question, in ad form.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 70 words


The Romney campaign ad, "Failing American Families":

What it says: "Under Obama, families have lost over $4,000 a year in income, and the national debt is now $16 trillion, and growing."

What it means: "Are you better off" under President Obama? Here are some reasons why you're not.

Who will see it: The Romney campaign did not specify where the ad is running.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



914 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 17, 2012 Monday
Regional Edition


Happening today


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 143 words



19.52%All day

80.48% The National Park Service marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam at the Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Md. Go to washingtonpost.com/civilwar for special Civil War anniversary coverage.

19.52%All day

80.48% President Obama holds campaign events in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, while first lady Michelle Obama visits Florida to campaign in Gainesville and Tallahassee. To follow the campaign, go to washingtonpost.com/politics.

19.52%10 a.m.

80.48% The National Archives holds a naturalization ceremony for 225 people seeking U.S. citizenship in honor of the 225th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.

19.52%12:15 p.m.

80.48% GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles.


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



915 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 17, 2012 Monday
Every Edition


Panel discussion to focus on best practices for secure cloud use


SECTION: Pg. A02


LENGTH: 473 words


The Indus Entrepreneurs D.C. is hosting a panel discussion on "Best Practices in Securing the Cloud" on Tuesday.

Speakers include Yuvi Kochar, chief technology officer of The Washington Post. Co.; Michael Brown, chief technology officer of Reston-based ComScore; Brian Cobb, managing vice president for IT and data center management, McLean-based Capital One; Chris Grady, chief executive officer, Lanham-based Clear Government Solutions; and Max Peterson, director and general manger for Herndon-based Amazon Web Services Worldwide Public Sector Partners, Capture and Contracts.

The event begins at 6 p.m. at Capital One, 1680 Capital One Dr., McLean. $10-$25 for members, $35 for everyone else.

Other events of note Tuesday, Sept. 18

The first of five workshops on marketing communications offered by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority is to focus on conducting a strength, weakness/limitations, opportunities and threats analysis. The workshop begins at 7:30 a.m. at the FCEDA's offices at 8300 Boone Blvd., Suite 450, Tysons Corner. Free.

The French-American Chamber of Commerce is hosting Rohini Anand, global chief diversity officer at Gaithersburg-based Sodexho; Harold C. Alford, president and chief executive of the District-based National Black Chamber of Commerce; and Suzanne Richards, vice president of the office of diversity and inclusion at District-based Freddie Mac, who are to talk about "Empowering Your Business Through Workforce Diversity." The event begins at 6 p.m. $10 for members, $20 for everyone else.

Wednesday, Sept. 19

The Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce is holding its fifth annual Skeet, Scotch & Cigars outing for senior executives. The event starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Bull Run Shooting Center, 7700 Bull Run Dr., Centerville. $165 for members, $185 for everyone else.

Thursday, Sept. 20

The D.C. Chamber of Commerce is to host Leila Aridi Afas, director for export promotion at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and Chuck Cooper, vice president for congressional and public affairs at the Millennium Challenge Corp., who are to talk about public sector export opportunities. The event begins at 9 a.m. at the chamber's offices at 506 9th St. NW. Free.

The Washington International Trade Association will host surrogates from the Mitt Romney and President Obama campaigns to talk about "Trade Policy in the Next Administration: How Would Romney and Obama Differ?" The event begins at 9 a.m. in the Rotunda Room, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. $15-$30 for members, $45 for everyone else.

The Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce is hosting a debate between Senate candidates George Allen (R) and Tim Kaine (D). The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Capitol One Conference Center, 1680 Capital One Dr., McLean. $150 for members, $250 for everyone else.

- Shawn Selby


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



916 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 17, 2012 Monday
Regional Edition


The Fix's week in politics


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 539 words


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"All you need to know about the differences between the president and myself is that I'm sitting there smoking a cigarette, drinking merlot, and I look across the table and here is the president of the United States drinking iced tea and chomping on Nicorette."

- House Speaker John Boehner, quoted in the new book by longtime Washington Post reporter and editor Bob Woodward, "The Price of Politics."

BY THE NUMBERS

1 The number of former aides to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) who signed on to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2014 reelection campaign last week. Jesse Benton, who will be working for McConnell (Ky.), was the chief strategist on the Texas congressman's presidential campaign, which was a far cry from the establishment wing of the GOP that McConnell represents. But McConnell's a survivor who is laying the groundwork early to prevent a primary defeat at the hands of a conservative challenger. After all, it was in McConnell's own back yard that now-Sen. Rand Paul (R) defeated a candidate backed by the minority leader just two years ago.

2 The number of TV ads Senate challenger Elizabeth Warren released in Massachusetts last week, mainly featuring supporters promoting her candidacy. After a summer full of spots primarily highlighting the Democrat pitching her own candidacy, Warren rebooted her ad strategy with commercials that let others do much of the talking for her. It's a shift that could help Warren seize back some of the momentum against Sen. Scott Brown (R), but also a sign that things weren't working as well as she had planned.

$114 million President Obama's August fundraising haul, a figure that bested Mitt Romney's month by $2.4 million. For the first time in four months, Obama outraised his Republican challenger. And with GOP-aligned outside groups outspending Democratic ones, the president will need a couple more months like August as the campaign season approaches its stretch run.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO DEMOCRATS

Mitt Romney. The GOP presidential candidate began the week with an

ill-timed attack on the Obama administration's posture toward protests in the Middle East (soon after, the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed). Then a series of polls showed Obama improving his standing. And then Romney capped off the week with some odd comments in a TV interview, including calling himself a "Snooki fan" and saying his guilty

pleasure is "peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk." So far, Romney seems to struggle in talking about anything other than the economy.

BEST THING THATHAPPENED TO REPUBLICANS

They got some good news on the Senate front. National Democrats were forced to launch and ad buy in Connecticut after polls showed Republican Linda McMahon leading (which suggests the blue state is now

in play). Also, Massachusetts Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren overhauled her advertising strategy in a tacit acknowledgment of her lack of traction against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). And finally, former South Dakota governor Mike Rounds (R) launched an exploratory committee for 2014, landing the GOP a top potential recruit and reinforcing the fact that it will have another great chance to pick up seats two years from now.

- Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 17, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



917 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 16, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


A Label That Has Regained Its Luster


BYLINE: By ALEX WILLIAMS


SECTION: Section ST; Column 0; Style Desk; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 1074 words


REMEMBER the Chrysler K-car? Dave Schiff, a founder of Made Collection, a new flash-sale site that sells only American-made goods, hopes not.

When he was coming of age in the early '80s, the phrase ''Buy American'' was epitomized by Chrysler's boxy, style-challenged sedan, marketed as a star-spangled rebuke to the sleek imports of the day. In Mr. Schiff's view, you bought one to satisfy a patriotic duty, not a sense of style. '' 'Made in the U.S.A.' came with baggage,'' he said.

Times have changed. Even as the ''Made in the U.S.A.'' label has grown scarce, thanks to the offshore manufacturing in apparel and other industries, it has acquired cachet as a signifier of old-school craftsmanship, even luxury.

The movement has come far enough that Mr. Schiff, a former advertising executive from Miami, believed the time was right to start a Gilt-like shopping site for the Americana set, selling items like shuttle-loom jeans, lace baby dolls and a 19th-century-style baseball made of leather sourced from a Chicago tannery.

''The old 'Buy American' is get something lousy and pay more,'' said Mr. Schiff, 45. Now ''it's a premium product.''

Style bloggers were among the early adopters. '' 'Made in U.S.A.' has gone through a rebranding of sorts,'' said Michael Williams, whose popular men's style blog, A Continuous Lean, has become an online clubhouse for devotees of American-made heritage labels like Red Wing Shoes and Filson.

But the embrace of domestic goods has also moved beyond scruffy D.J. types in Brooklyn who plunk down $275 for a pair of hand-sewn dungarees sewn from Cone denim from the company's White Oak plant in North Carolina. The adherents now include ''urban creatives, high-net-worth individuals, locavores, liberals, conservatives,'' said Mr. Williams, who also represents some of these heritage brands as a marketing consultant.

In other words, Americana chic has gone mainstream. Just visit the nearest mall. Club Monaco unveiled a Made in the USA collection last year, in collaboration with Mr. Williams. J. Crew cashes in on Americana chic by selling domestically manufactured Alden shoes, Levi's Vintage Clothing jeans and Billykirk leather goods. Joseph Abboud's home page trumpets its collections as ''Made in the New America.''

The newfound pride also extends to American cities and smaller communities. Made in Brooklyn is a phenomenon so self-aware, there are stores like By Brooklyn that specialize in products made in the borough. Similarly, an old shoe-polish brand called Shinola has recently been revived to make upscale watches, bicycles and other crafted goods in Detroit and is being promoted as ''Made in Detroit.''

And in a survey last year of 1,300 affluent shoppers by Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based consulting and marketing group, respondents ranked the United States first (higher than Italy or France) in perceived manufacturing quality of luxury goods.

Indeed, the ''Made in the U.S.A.'' label has become chic in the eyes of well-heeled consumers not just in the United States, but also in Asia, said Paulette Garafalo, the president for international, wholesale and manufacturing at Brooks Brothers, which has increased production of shirts, suits and neckwear at its three American factories to meet growing demand. ''People want the credibility of an American brand,'' she said.

The flight of American factory jobs has even become a heated issue in the presidential race, with President Obama and Mitt Romney trading jabs over being the ''Outsourcer in Chief,'' to use Mr. Romney's phrase.

But while American-made goods are now fashionable, few have been willing to stake their professional future on it quite like Mr. Schiff. A former advertising executive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami, who oversaw the introduction of Coke Zero, he left the firm in April to start Made with two other veterans from the agency, Scott Prindle and John Kieselhorst.

In a sense, they started two companies, which are based in Boulder, Colo.: Made Collection, the flash-sale site, and Made Movement, an advertising agency that represents companies that manufacture only in America. (''If Apple came to us, we'd have to turn them down,'' Mr. Schiff said.)

Unlike the typical Buy American sites, which feature crude graphics and a low-budget hodgepodge of pliers and rain boots, Made Collection has the slick yet earthy look of a Madewell campaign. Edie Ure, a former designer for Ralph Lauren and Anthropologie, serves as the site's curator, and she gives special consideration to design-forward wares that would not be out of place in a Monocle magazine gift guide.

Recent flash-sale items included a knot-back black swimsuit from Cala Ossidiana, a swimwear company based in New York. It sells for $295 and, according to a graphic accompanying each item, supports six American workers. For those with humbler tastes, there was an O.C.E. Hickory work shirt, produced by inmates in the Oregon correctional system as part of its job-training program, for $26.99.

The company grew out of Mr. Schiff's conviction that a manufacturing revival was crucial to a lasting economic recovery.

Made now counts 26 employees, and with a minimum of publicity, its site has 10,000 members. The ad agency has signed seven clients, including Emeco chairs, a Pennsylvania-based design company whose product sells at Design Within Reach, and New Belgium Brewing, based in Fort Collins, Colo., which brews Fat Tire ale.

Mr. Schiff practices what he preaches. For a recent lunch at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, he wore Levi's premium shuttle-loom 501s made in Los Angeles. His tattooed arms poked out of a blue checked shirt by the boutique design house 8.15 August Fifteenth, made in New York City, which he spruced up with a seersucker bow tie by Gitman Bros., made in North Carolina. The only smudge on the stars-and-stripes tableau was his pair of Vans sneakers made in China.

''I would say most days, I'm at about 75 percent,'' he said, referring to how much of his outfit is American made. He never wants to become a fanatic, however. ''If you become obsessive about it,'' he added, ''it's an imposition versus a choice.''

PHOTOS: PUT TO GOOD USE: Left, shirts and an apron made by inmates in the Oregon correctional system. Cuff links made from recycled bullets.(ST16); STARTING HERE: From left, John Kieselhorst, Dave Schiff and Scott Prindle, founders of Made. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(ST17)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/fashion/made-in-the-usa-has-a-new-meaning.html


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



918 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 16, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


In Dueling Ads, Candidates Seek to Politicize Issues of China and Manufacturing


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 18


LENGTH: 617 words


United States-China relations continue to surface as an issue on the campaign trail, particularly in battleground states like Ohio where manufacturing is a major force in the local economy. Now both President Obama and Mitt Romney are running television commercials that trade accusations over who is softer on China, and who is more to blame for sending American jobs there.

The Romney campaign ad states: ''Under Obama we've lost over half a million manufacturing jobs, and for the first time China is beating us. Seven times Obama could have stopped China's cheating. Seven times he refused.'' Then it cuts to Mr. Romney, who declares, ''It's time to stand up to the cheaters and make sure we protect jobs for the American people.''

The announcer concludes, ''Barack Obama: failing to stop cheating, failing American workers.''

The Obama campaign ad, released a day after the Romney one first appeared, opens on an incredulous note. ''Mitt Romney tough on China?'' an announcer asks. ''Romney's companies were called pioneers in shipping U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. He invested in firms that specialized in relocating jobs to low-wage countries like China. Even today part of Romney's fortune is invested in China. Romney's never stood up to China. All he's done is send them our jobs.''

Who is right? Mr. Romney's first claim -- that more than half a million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since Mr. Obama took office -- is supported by data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which show manufacturing employment at 12.5 million in January 2009 and put it at just under 12 million as of August, a net loss because of job cuts during the recession.

However, what the ad does not say is that manufacturers have actually added several hundred thousand jobs since early 2010, a bright spot in an otherwise dull economy.

His second claim, regarding the ''seven times Obama could have stopped China's cheating,'' refers to the Treasury Department's repeated decisions -- under both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations -- to decline to label China a currency manipulator. Mr. Romney has said he would reverse that course, a position that has alarmed some free-trade Republicans, who think the move could escalate tensions between the United States and China.

Mr. Obama has made the term ''outsourcing pioneer'' a regular line in his stump speech and a catchphrase in his advertising. It is also one of the most disputed accusations of the presidential campaign. Its origins lie in a Washington Post article from June, in which the paper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity company Romney founded, ''owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories.''

But to say that these companies were ''pioneers'' -- that is, literally paving the way for others to ship jobs overseas -- has been called a stretch by independent fact-checkers because it misleadingly implies that Bain was leading an industry trend at the time. The Romney campaign tried, but ultimately failed, to win a retraction from The Post for its story, which the Obama campaign used as fodder for an attack ad immediately after its publication.

As for the ad's other claim, that part of Mr. Romney's fortune is tied to Chinese investments? It is true, but it fails to note that this is not due to any action on Mr. Romney's part. This year, The New York Times reported that late last year ''a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company.''

Though Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain's operations since 1999, his fortune is still closely linked to the company.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/us/politics/in-dueling-ads-candidates-seek-to-politicize-issues-of-china-and-manufacturing.html


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



919 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 16, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Challenged on Medicare, G.O.P. Loses Ground


BYLINE: By JACKIE CALMES


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1506 words


ORLANDO, Fla. -- Maria Rubin is one of the coveted independent voters in this swing state -- so independent that she will not say whether she is voting for President Obama or Mitt Romney. She does share her age (63) and, more quickly, her opinion on Medicare: ''I'm not in favor of changing it, or eliminating it.''

Her attitude speaks directly to one of the biggest challenges facing the Republican ticket this year: countering the Democrats' longstanding advantage as the party more trusted to deal with Medicare.

In the 2010 Congressional races, successful Republicans believed that they had finally found a way to do that, by linking the program's future to Mr. Obama's unpopular health insurance overhaul and accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare to pay for it. This summer Mr. Romney resumed the offensive, eventually joined by his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan.

Initially, polls suggested that the Republican strategy was working. Democrats fretted that Mr. Romney would win the retiree-heavy Florida and increase his support nationwide among older voters, who lean Republican anyway. David Winston, a Republican pollster, wrote a month ago of ''a structural shift in the issue'' that left the parties in ''a dead heat'' and Mr. Obama unable to mount an effective response.

But in recent weeks Mr. Obama and his campaign have hit back hard, and enlisted former President Bill Clinton as well, to make the case that the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare would leave older Americans vulnerable to rising health care costs. Now their counterattack seems to be paying off.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted over the last week, found that Mr. Obama held an advantage over Mr. Romney on the question of who would do a better job of handling Medicare. That is consistent with other recent polls and is a shift from just last month, before the parties' national conventions, when the two men were statistically tied on the issue.

At the heart of the conflict is the proposal backed by Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan to change the way Medicare works in an effort to drive down health care costs and keep the program solvent as the population ages. Under their plan, retirees would get a fixed annual payment from the government that they could use to buy traditional Medicare coverage or a private health insurance policy. Supporters say the change would hold expenses down by introducing more competition into the system.

Critics say the fixed payments might not keep up with rising insurance costs and could leave older Americans facing cutbacks in care or paying more out of their own pockets. Democrats contend that Medicare's rising costs can be held down within the existing system.

In the Times/CBS poll, more than three-quarters of voters favored keeping Medicare the way it is rather than switching to a system like the one backed by Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan. From the White House on down, Democrats are calling the Republican approach a ''voucher'' plan, suggesting that it borders on privatizing the system; Republicans prefer the term ''premium support.''

As that poll result reflects, the Democratic message is resonating with voters like Ms. Rubin, who joined other independent and Democratic voters last week to hear Mr. Clinton make his pitch for Mr. Obama's re-election in the packed ballroom of a resort hotel here.

''I don't trust anybody who says 'voucher,' '' said Gary Fieldsend, 62, a recently retired employee at a Navy shipyard who was vacationing here with his wife Pamela, 64. The Fieldsends, from New Hampshire, another swing state, describe themselves as Democratic-leaning independents, and both said they were voting for Mr. Obama.

''I think it's very important that we keep it under control on cost,'' Mr. Fieldsend said. ''But you have to cover people. Even if you've got millions of baby boomers, you've got to find a way to do it.''

Given the political risks, Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, this year changed his 2011 budget passed by the House from a plan that would have made private insurance the only option available to beneficiaries to one that offered a choice between traditional Medicare or private coverage.

Democrats focused heavily on Medicare at their convention and have kept up the assault since then. Last weekend in Kissimmee, Fla., Mr. Obama spoke of Republican plans for ''voucherizing Medicare,'' while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. says Republicans will institute ''vouchercare.'' Mr. Obama will address AARP's annual convention this week by satellite; Mr. Ryan will appear in person.

And soon, strategists say, Democrats will buttress their Medicare message by charging that a Romney-Ryan administration could also seek to alter Social Security, the other popular entitlement program. They will point out Mr. Ryan's support in 2005 for President George W. Bush's proposal to allow workers to divert Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts, a plan that flopped even though Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

It is a paradox of recent politics that despite Democrats' usual advantage on Medicare, voters 65 and older are the age group least supportive of Mr. Obama and his party. His challenge is to depress Mr. Romney's support among older voters by raising doubts about Republicans on Medicare.

''It's pretty clear that Medicare is the one issue that could dislodge the Republicans' headlock on those voters,'' said Andrew Kohut, the president of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

''The Republicans brought it back to life,'' Mr. Kohut added -- first by House Republicans' approval this year and last of the Ryan budgets, which died in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and most of all by Mr. Romney's elevation of Mr. Ryan to the presidential ticket.

Medicare is an especially resonant issue in Florida, and Mr. Ryan has appeared in the state with his mother, a Medicare beneficiary, to emphasize the message that Republicans are trying to preserve the program, not end or curtail it.

So it was no accident that Mr. Clinton's first post-convention trip as a surrogate for Mr. Obama was to Florida. Or that he was preceded here last weekend by Mr. Obama, who made four stops in the state and will return again this week.

Mr. Clinton brought up Medicare Advantage, a private insurance option for Medicare beneficiaries that is used by 2.1 million Floridians. Begun late in the Clinton administration as an experiment to cut costs through market competition, Medicare Advantage has instead proved more costly than regular Medicare.

The 2010 health care law reduced Medicare subsidies to insurance companies to help save $716 billion over 10 years, which added eight years to the program's financial life. But Republicans have been on the attack since, charging Democrats with robbing Medicare beneficiaries to pay for ''Obamacare.''

Mr. Clinton pointed out that a record number of insurance companies and beneficiaries now participate in Medicare Advantage, and that premiums are lower. ''So if the president was trying to wreck Medicare Advantage, he did a poor job of it because it's in the best shape it's ever been in,'' Mr. Clinton said.

Then he repeated one of the biggest applause lines of his nationally televised address at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. Noting that Mr. Ryan is attacking the $716 billion in savings although his budgets also included them, Mr. Clinton quipped, ''You got to give it to Congressman Ryan -- it takes real brass to attack somebody for doing something he did.''

For now, the Romney campaign has stopped running advertisements attacking Mr. Obama on Medicare. But House Republicans are continuing to press the issue.

A commercial in Iowa, for example, accuses Representative Leonard L. Boswell, a Democrat, of taking $716 billion ''from current recipients of Medicare to take care of a government takeover of health care that benefits other people.''

Democrats are striking back. Representative Bruce Braley of Iowa last weekend became the first Democratic Congressional candidate to run an ad featuring Mr. Clinton's folksy convention put-down of Republicans. It features Mr. Clinton saying: ''Democrats didn't weaken Medicare. They strengthened Medicare.''

Instead of Mr. Clinton, the Obama campaign is using a similar testimonial from AARP in its ads for the president.

''We were going to talk about Medicare whether they brought it up or not,'' said Joel Benenson, a pollster for the Obama campaign. Republicans, he said, ''were trying to get ahead of an issue that was a big problem for them. And it is a big problem for them, especially after they put Paul Ryan, the author of the voucher scheme, on their ticket.''

PHOTOS: A plan to overhaul Medicare by Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, is drawing heavy fire from Democrats. (PHOTOGRAPH BY OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES); The Democratic ticket is using former President Bill Clinton on the stump to attack the Republicans' approach on Medicare. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANGEL VALENTIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A19)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/us/politics/in-poll-obama-opens-medicare-edge-over-romney.html


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



920 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 16, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Influential imbeciles


BYLINE: Kathleen Parker


SECTION: Editorial; Pg. A23


LENGTH: 783 words


"This time, the imbeciles have won."

That was the assessment of French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in his remembrance of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

And he wasn't just whistling "Freres Jacques."

BHL was referring to the fact that Stevens was a great friend of Libya and of the Muslim/Arab world generally. The imbeciles killed perhaps their bravest advocate in the Western world. And they killed him (perhaps in part) because of the actions of another imbecile in the United States. One lowlife creates an anti-Islam film that looks like a blend of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Keystone Terrorists," and the unhappy Muslim world goes ballistic.

I emphasize the word "unhappy" because it is no more accurate to condemn the Muslim world for the atrocities of a relative few than it is to indict America because one lowbrow decides to upload a lousy flick that nobody otherwise would watch or even know about.

Hey, demonstrators: Anybody can make a movie. It doesn't mean anything.

And by the way, anybody can burn a Koran. Or a Bible. Or smear feces on a crucifix. Or . . . ad infinitum. We tolerate rudeness because the alternative - state-enforced politeness - leads to the guillotine.

Unfortunately, even we seem to have lost sight of the nature and causes of these incidents, which have less to do with reasons than with excuses. The demonstrations and attacks more likely are a function of post-revolutionary jockeying among the groups competing for power than they are about American anything. The storming of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 may have been a planned attack, possibly orchestrated by al-Qaeda and possibly having nothing to do with the movie.

The extent of our role, alas, has been exaggerated by our own actions. At least two notable missteps should be reminders about the importance of getting it right. For handy reference, check the parenting manual: Do not indulge tantrums.

First, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued what amounted to an apology to the mobs for any hurt feelings they may have suffered because of the film in question. If you intend to watch it, be sure to take necessary IQ-lowering measures. It is so ridiculous and poorly made, no movie-going American could watch long without succumbing to laughter or . . . coma.

But then, the America-hating, unhappy Muslim mob isn't familiar with RottenTomatoes.com or even Siskel and Ebert. They watch a homemade movie trailer on their computer and see a nation of haters. How does one deal with this kind of senseless rabidity?

Apparently not through any civilized response such as, "Gosh, sorry about that awful film. We don't really believe that." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the film "disgusting and reprehensible." Of course it is, but so what? Besides, I don't think they're listening.

Here on Planet Earth, where being goofy isn't a head-severing offense, one reaches without strain the following observation: The film was idiotic and not worth the attention of our president or secretary of state. The response has made clear that an apology doesn't work, which is why both the White House and the State Department initially distanced themselves from the embassy's statement.

This is most certainly why Mitt Romney decided to enter the fray, for which he has been variously pilloried and heralded. Put me in the pillory column. His comments condemning President Obama's "apologist" foreign policy were premature, inappropriate and too politically motivated to be effective either as proper criticism or as a campaign maneuver.

Attempting to clarify, Romney's foreign policy adviser, Rich Williamson, asserted that events would have been different under a President Romney. Perhaps, but might we use the same powers of extrapolation to infer that 9/11 wouldn't have occurred if George W. Bush hadn't been president?

Obama critics have long held that his post-exceptionalist, lead-from-behind model invites only contempt in the Middle East. Since no policy thus far seems to have been very effective, we'll have to rely on history for more information. On principle, meanwhile, Romney would have been better advised to keep his own counsel pending clarity - always the wiser course.

What we clearly must not convey to the Muslim world is that either a random, Koran-burning zealot or an anti-Muhammad filmmaker is remotely relevant to our foreign policy. By apologizing - and later by Romney's commenting - we made events more of an American problem than they were, as The Post's David Ignatius recently noted. And we lent unnecessary gravity and impetus to the conduct of imbeciles.

Obviously, they don't need any help.

kathleenparker@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



921 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 16, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


A too-simple defenseof the new welfare rule


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A07


LENGTH: 1103 words


"The administration agreed to give waivers to those [GOP] governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. . . . The requirement was for more work, not less."

- Former president Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, Sept. 5 

Readers may recall that in August, we gave four Pinocchios to Mitt Romney for a TV advertisement accusing President Obama of gutting former president Bill Clinton's welfare overhaul. What's the fuss about? Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the centerpiece of the 1996 legislation, established work requirements and time-limited benefits for recipients. But in July, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a memorandum saying that it was encouraging "states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment." As part of that, the HHS secretary would consider issuing waivers to states concerning worker participation targets.

HHS's action set off a firestorm of criticism by Republicans, which was echoed in Romney's ad. 

In his high-profile speech at the Democratic convention, Clinton came to Obama's defense, claiming that the change in rules actually would require "more work, not less." After talking to many people on all sides of the welfare debate, we can certainly say this 20 percent figure is a very complex issue - which makes it ripe for fact-checking. (Note: This is a summary of a much longer online analysis.)

The Facts

There are three basic rules in Washington: 1. Nothing happens by accident; 2. personnel determines policy; and 3. no argument is ever settled. That dynamic is central to understanding the controversy surrounding the HHS memo. In this case, conservatives suspected that the Obama administration was trying to achieve through regulatory fiat what liberals had not been able to accomplish through legislation in the past 16 years.

By many accounts, a key player in the development of the memo was Mark Greenberg, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at the HHS unit that oversees TANF. Key aspects of the memo turn up in Greenberg's congressional testimony over the years when he was outside of government, arguing for changes in the 1996 law. On the opposite side of the long-running debate is Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation scholar who helped craft the law. The two men have testified side by side before Congress, as the yin and yang of the welfare reform debate.

Boiled down, one key difference between the two sides is whether one should focus on job search (conservative) or job training (liberal). There was little job training in the 1996 law, which put the main focus on getting people back to work.

The HHS memo listed as possible projects for waivers such ideas as "multi-year career pathways models for TANF recipients that combine learning and work."

Another issue is whether provisions should be made for people who are disabled. Indeed, the HHS memo touts "projects that demonstrate strategies for more effectively serving individuals with disabilities, along with an alternative approach to measuring participation and outcomes for individuals with disabilities."

Critics suggest that opens the door for a whole class of people being removed from needing to find work, making it easy to boost published employment rates for others receiving assistance.

Interestingly, the claim made by Clinton - that the "administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent" - is not in the memo.

Instead, that assertion appears in a letter written by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) after Republicans objected to the memo. She also wrote that states must show "clear progress" after a year or they will lose the waiver.The original HHS memo was significantly weaker, suggesting that a state have at least several opportunities to prove that their plan works.

In an interview, administration officials said that Sebelius's letter represented the most up-to-date version of the administration's emerging policy. Still, there seems to be some wiggle room, as there is no definition yet of "clear progress" and officials said states could identify "interim targets" if they do not initially meet the 20 percent threshold.

How many people are we talking about? The latest data show that in 2010, of the 1.84 million families on welfare, 16.6 percent - or about 300,000 - left the rolls because of a new job.

Looking at the states with Republican governors that the administration said requested waivers, the numbers needed to meet the 20 percent target do not appear to be large. In Nevada, the target for 20 percent would be an additional 46 families. In Utah, the number would be 147 families.

One former top welfare official said he could easily meet the administration's requirements by more assiduously tracking people who found jobs but did not inform the welfare agency.

Administration officials insist that will not be the case. For instance, officials said they plan to adjust the targets according to the growth of the economy, so a state could not simply meet its goal because a booming economy has made more jobs available.

The administration also says it will not rely on state-supplied data to measure progress but would come up with its own baseline from national data.

The Pinocchio Test

We stand by our earlier ruling on Romney's welfare ad. Still, there is enough uncertainty about how the administration will implement these waivers that it is a stretch for Clinton to declare for certain that a 20 percent threshold must be met - and to claim that more people will end up working under this new system.

The administration's emerging criteria, which have not been previously reported, certainly sounds reassuring. But much will depend on how the baseline number is determined - and then how the process is monitored. In theory, a state could go five years without ever meeting the 20 percent threshold.

We settled on two Pinocchios, mainly because Clinton, in his facile way, made this intense debate appear as if it is mainly a dispute about moving "folks from welfare to work." It is not quite so simple as that, and neither is it clear yet that the net result is that more people on welfare will end up working.

kesslerg@washpost.com

Read more Fact Checker columns at washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



922 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 16, 2012 Sunday
Regional Edition


Influential imbeciles


BYLINE: Kathleen Parker


SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A23


LENGTH: 780 words


"This time, the imbeciles have won."

That was the assessment of French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in his remembrance of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

And he wasn't just whistling "Freres Jacques."

BHL was referring to the fact that Stevens was a great friend of Libya and of the Muslim/Arab world generally. The imbeciles killed perhaps their bravest advocate in the Western world.

And they killed him (perhaps in part) because of the actions of another imbecile in the United States. One lowlife creates an anti-Islam film that looks like a blend of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Keystone Terrorists," and the unhappy Muslim world goes ballistic.

I emphasize the word "unhappy" because it is no more accurate to condemn the Muslim world for the atrocities of a relative few than it is to indict America because one lowbrow decides to upload a lousy flick that nobody otherwise would watch or even know about.

Hey, demonstrators: Anybody can make a movie. It doesn't mean anything.

And by the way, anybody can burn a Koran. Or a Bible. Or smear feces on a crucifix. Or . . . ad infinitum. We tolerate rudeness because the alternative - state-enforced politeness - leads to the guillotine.

Unfortunately, even we seem to have lost sight of the nature and causes of these incidents, which have less to do with reasons than with excuses. The demonstrations and attacks more likely are a function of post-revolutionary jockeying among the groups competing for power than they are about American anything. The storming of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 may have been a planned attack, possibly orchestrated by al-Qaeda and possibly having nothing to do with the movie.

The extent of our role, alas, has been exaggerated by our own actions. At least two notable missteps should be reminders about the importance of getting it right. For handy reference, check the parenting manual: Do not indulge tantrums.

First, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued what amounted to an apology to the mobs for any hurt feelings they may have suffered because of the film in question. If you intend to watch it, be sure to take necessary IQ-lowering measures. It is so ridiculous and poorly made, no movie-going American could watch long without succumbing to laughter or . . . coma.

But then, the America-hating, unhappy Muslim mob isn't familiar with RottenTomatoes.com or even Siskel and Ebert. They watch a homemade movie trailer on their computer and see a nation of haters. How does one deal with this kind of senseless rabidity?

Apparently not through any civilized response such as, "Gosh, sorry about that awful film. We don't really believe that." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the film "disgusting and reprehensible." Of course it is, but so what? Besides, I don't think they're listening.

Here on Planet Earth, where being goofy isn't a head-severing offense, one reaches without strain the following observation: The film was idiotic and not worth the attention of our president or secretary of state. The response has made clear that an apology doesn't work, which is why both the White House and the State Department initially distanced themselves from the embassy's statement.

This is most certainly why Mitt Romney decided to enter the fray, for which he has been variously pilloried and heralded. Put me in the pillory column. His comments condemning President Obama's "apologist" foreign policy were premature, inappropriate and too politically motivated to be effective either as proper criticism or as a campaign maneuver.

Attempting to clarify, Romney's foreign policy adviser, Rich Williamson, asserted that events would have been different under a President Romney. Perhaps, but might we use the same powers of extrapolation to infer that 9/11 wouldn't have occurred if George W. Bush hadn't been president?

Obama critics have long held that his post-exceptionalist, lead-from-behind model invites only contempt in the Middle East. Since no policy thus far seems to have been very effective, we'll have to rely on history for more information. On principle, meanwhile, Romney would have been better advised to keep his own counsel pending clarity - always the wiser course.

What we clearly must not convey to the Muslim world is that either a random, Koran-burning zealot or an anti-Muhammad filmmaker is remotely relevant to our foreign policy. By apologizing - and later by Romney's commenting - we made events more of an American problem than they were, as The Post's David Ignatius recently noted. And we lent unnecessary gravity and impetus to the conduct of imbeciles.

Obviously, they don't need any help.

kathleenparker@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



923 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 16, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


A too-simple defenseof the new welfare rule


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A07


LENGTH: 1089 words


"The administration agreed to give waivers to those [GOP] governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. . . . The requirement was for more work, not less."

- Former president Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention, Sept. 5

Readers may recall that in August, we gave four Pinocchios to Mitt Romney for a TV advertisement accusing President Obama of gutting former president Bill Clinton's welfare overhaul.

What's the fuss about? Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the centerpiece of the 1996 legislation, established work requirements and time-limited benefits for recipients. But in July, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a memorandum saying that it was encouraging "states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment." As part of that, the HHS secretary would consider issuing waivers to states concerning worker participation targets.

HHS's action set off a firestorm of criticism by Republicans, which was echoed in Romney's ad. 

In his high-profile speech at the Democratic convention, Clinton came to Obama's defense, claiming that the change in rules actually would require "more work, not less." After talking to many people on all sides of the welfare debate, we can certainly say this 20 percent figure is a very complex issue - which makes it ripe for fact-checking. (Note: This is a summary of a much longer online analysis.)

The Facts

There are three basic rules in Washington: 1. Nothing happens by accident; 2. personnel determines policy; and 3. no argument is ever settled. That dynamic is central to understanding the controversy surrounding the HHS memo. In this case, conservatives suspected that the Obama administration was trying to achieve through regulatory fiat what liberals had not been able to accomplish through legislation in the past 16 years.

By many accounts, a key player in the development of the memo was Mark Greenberg, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at the HHS unit that oversees TANF. Key aspects of the memo turn up in Greenberg's congressional testimonyover the years when he was outside of government, arguing for changes in the 1996 law.

On the opposite side of the long-running debate is Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation scholar who helped craft the law. The two men have testified side by side before Congress, as the yin and yang of the welfare reform debate.

Boiled down, one key difference between the two sides is whether one should focus on job search (conservative) or job training (liberal). There was little job training in the 1996 law, which put the main focus on getting people back to work.

The HHS memo listed as possible projects for waivers such ideas as "multi-year career pathways models for TANF recipients that combine learning and work."

Another issue is whether provisions should be made for people who are disabled. Indeed, the HHS memo touts "projects that demonstrate strategies for more effectively serving individuals with disabilities, along with an alternative approach to measuring participation and outcomes for individuals with disabilities."

Critics suggest that opens the door for a whole class of people being removed from needing to find work, making it easy to boost published employment rates for others receiving assistance.

Interestingly, the claim made by Clinton - that the "administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent" - is not in the memo.

Instead, that assertion appears in a letter written by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) after Republicans objected to the memo. She also wrote that states must show "clear progress" after a year or they will lose the waiver.

The original HHS memo was significantly weaker, suggesting that a state have at least several opportunities to prove that their plan works.

In an interview, administration officials said that Sebelius's letter represented the most up-to-date version of the administration's emerging policy. Still, there seems to be some wiggle room, as there is no definition yet of "clear progress" and officials said states could identify "interim targets" if they do not initially meet the 20 percent threshold.

How many people are we talking about? The latest data show that in 2010, of the 1.84 million families on welfare, 16.6 percent - or about 300,000 - left the rolls because of a new job.

Looking at the states with Republican governors that the administration said requested waivers, the numbers needed to meet the 20 percent target do not appear to be large. In Nevada, the target for 20 percent would be an additional 46 families. In Utah, the number would be 147 families.

One former top welfare official said he could easily meet the administration's requirements by more assiduously tracking people who found jobs but did not inform the welfare agency.

Administration officials insist that will not be the case. For instance, officials said they plan to adjust the targets according to the growth of the economy, so a state could not simply meet its goal because a booming economy has made more jobs available.

The administration also says it will not rely on state-supplied data to measure progress but would come up with its own baseline from national data.

The Pinocchio Test

We stand by our earlier ruling on Romney's welfare ad. Still, there is enough uncertainty about how the administration will implement these waivers that it is a stretch for Clinton to declare for certain that a 20 percent threshold must be met - and to claim that more people will end up working under this new system.

The administration's emerging criteria, which have not been previously reported, certainly sounds reassuring. But much will depend on how the baseline number is determined - and then how the process is monitored. In theory, a state could go five years without ever meeting the 20 percent threshold.

We settled on two Pinocchios, mainly because Clinton, in his facile way, made this intense debate appear as if it is mainly a dispute about moving "folks from welfare to work." It is not quite so simple as that, and neither is it clear yet that the net result is that more people on welfare will end up working.

kesslerg@washpost.com

Read more Fact Checker columns at washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



924 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 15, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Bailed Out By Obama, But Rooting For Romney


BYLINE: By JAMES B. STEWART


SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; COMMON SENSE; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1504 words


If there's anywhere President Obama should expect to get a boost from the success of the government's rescue of General Motors, it's Wentzville, Mo., and Lordstown, Ohio.

In Wentzville, a city of 30,000 people west of St. Louis, production of full-size vans at the General Motors plant had dwindled to a single shift by 2009. But last November, G.M. announced a $380 million expansion, and broke ground in May on a 500,000-square-foot plant where it will manufacture its midsize Colorado pickup. G.M. expects to employ over 3,000 workers there when the expansion is complete.

The automaker announced in August that it would build the next generation of its popular Chevrolet Cruze compact in Lordstown, a town of 4,000 people southeast of Cleveland. G.M. said it would spend $220 million to upgrade the plant and pledged to at least maintain the 4,500 jobs now there. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited a local union hall on Aug. 31 to extol G.M.'s progress.

Ohio and Missouri are traditionally important swing states. But in St. Charles County, where Wentzville is, it's not Mr. Obama but his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, who is predicted to win by a large margin. In heavily Democratic Lordstown, Mr. Obama is expected to prevail, but Mr. Romney is likely to carry two neighboring counties that also benefit from G.M.'s success.

''That's surprising,'' John Weaver, a political consultant and former John McCain adviser, told me this week. ''I think especially with swing voters, they look at the auto industry and they see that government did work for them. It's not just Wall Street that got help. It worked in a practical way in an industry that's important to their state.'' (Mr. Weaver isn't working on the Romney campaign.)

I spoke this week with residents of both towns, and no one disputed that, from their perspective, the G.M. rescue has been a success.

''G.M. has been the catalyst for everything,'' Wentzville's mayor, Nick Guccione, told me. ''They've already hired about 700 people, and they're talking about bringing in over a thousand new jobs. And these are real jobs, with real wages. G.M. has brought in 1,300 construction workers for the new plant. We're told that for every job they bring in, that creates five more jobs. It's made Wentzville a more vibrant community. People can work, play, spend, shop.''

By many measures, Wentzville is thriving. In the two decades before 2010, the city's population grew to 29,100, from 5,000, making it Missouri's fastest-growing city, according to the city Web site. Mr. Guccione estimated that the current population was over 30,000 and said that per capita income and sales tax receipts had risen steadily despite the recession. A Sam's Club will be the country's largest when it opens in October, the mayor said. Voters approved a tax increase to pay for three new parks, and one of them, a large aquatic center, is scheduled to open next year.

Tony Thieman, owner of Thieman's Carpet Company and a former president of the local Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce, said his business was up 18 percent this year. ''I'm seeing an increase. It declined for three to four years, and now it's improving. It's not back to where it was, but I do see that happening in the next year or two.'' He's also a commercial landlord, with tenants that include a restaurant and a hair salon. ''Their business is up. It's a general positive swing,'' he said.

Like the mayor, Mr. Thieman attributes much of the town's success to G.M.'s survival. ''G.M. has been very active working with small businesses in the local area. I sell them flooring for their offices. They support the restaurants and local home-and-farm supply stores. We're lucky we had G.M. They kept people working here and the cash flowing. We've been fortunate.''

As for the government rescue, ''People were disappointed at first,'' Mr. Guccione said. ''They were asking, 'Why didn't I get a bailout?' But when G.M. expanded, they said, 'It worked, it helped. Maybe it didn't help everyone but it sure helped us.' ''

But none of this has necessarily translated into support for Mr. Obama. The mayor was elected on a nonpartisan ballot and says he is a political independent. ''Both parties, they don't care about the people,'' he said. ''They just care about being re-elected. As far as Obama, are people happy with him? No. I don't think he accomplished what he set out to do. Is Romney the answer? I don't think so. He doesn't have the answers; the only thing that would change is the name of the president. That's one man's opinion. I hope someone proves me wrong.''

Still, ''On the bailout, I've got to give Obama credit. It did work. But you can't judge a man by one thing.'' Mr. Guccione said he hadn't decided who he would vote for.

Mr. Thieman agreed that local support for G.M. didn't necessarily mean support for President Obama, in part because people are still bothered by the idea of a bailout. ''It's a touchy subject,'' he said. ''People don't like bailouts. I think G.M. has been a good thing for people here. But personally, I want to see everybody be accountable for the money and it get paid back to the American people. A lot of people here feel that way.''

In Lordstown, Mayor Arno A. Hill is a retired tool-and-die maker for Delphi, the former G.M. subsidiary, and was a member of the United Automobile Workers for 32 years. ''G.M. has carried this valley economically for years,'' he said. ''I'm glad the plant is still here. The whole valley is glad they're here. This is the best product lineup they've ever had. For every job at that plant, we get several more. That's what all the experts tell us.''

Mayor Hill said the area had been through hard times, but ''G.M. has helped us overcome this, and I do think we're looking up. We just opened up a big McDonald's and Chipotle Mexican Grill warehouse. The oil and gas boom could be huge for us. It's looking better, absolutely.''

But as in Missouri, Lordstown's resurgence doesn't necessarily translate into support for President Obama. Although Mr. Hill said he believed that the president would carry the county, where registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans, he noted that adjoining Geauga and Columbiana Counties were likely to vote for Mr. Romney, as they did for Mr. McCain in 2008.

''Most people would say that without G.M., we would really be hurting,'' Mr. Hill said. ''But to say everyone is 100 percent behind the bailout, that's different. A lot of people ask me, 'How can G.M. pay bonuses when they still owe the government money?' That upsets people.''

(Technically, G.M. doesn't owe the government money. It paid back its loans in full and the government took an equity stake in return for the rest of its money. But last month, the Treasury estimated that the government might ultimately lose about $25.1 billion on its investment.)

Despite his union past, Mr. Hill is a Republican, and said he was voting for Mr. Romney. ''I'm glad G.M. is here, and you can't rewrite history. But I believe in less government and lower taxes and that people should have personal responsibility. Government isn't the answer for everything. John F. Kennedy said, 'Ask not what your country can do for you.' That's what the Republican Party is saying today.''

Mr. Weaver, the political consultant, said he was traveling in the Midwest when the Wall Street banks were rescued by the government. ''People kept asking, 'Why don't you bail out the auto industry if you're bailing out the banks?' Now they're asking, 'Why didn't you bail out the dry cleaners? How come small-business people didn't get help?' If you're ideologically opposed to government bailouts, nothing's going to change your view.''

Such attitudes may help explain why Mr. Romney renewed his attack this week on President Obama's handling of the auto industry bailout. He has been an outspoken critic of the government's rescue of General Motors and Chrysler. In November 2008, he wrote an Op-Ed column in The New York Times arguing, ''If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.''

Mr. Romney argued this week on ''Meet the Press'' that the rescue wasted $20 billion in taxpayer funds that could have been better spent on ''teachers and policemen, as well as growing our economy.'' He vowed to press the issue in his coming debates with President Obama.

Still, Mr. Weaver said such arguments appealed only to the party faithful. He noted that in states like Michigan, where recent polls suggest the president is ahead, and in Ohio and Missouri, where local economies are improving in large part thanks to the auto industry, ''Obama is going to get credit for that. Romney should stop harping on the negatives and offer a bold and detailed plan for how he'd move the country forward.''

PHOTO: Mayor Nick Guccione of Wentzville, Mo., at the town's G.M. plant. The carmaker is building another plant nearby. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DILIP VISHWANAT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B7)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/business/in-missouri-and-ohio-gm-bailouts-success-is-no-guarantee-of-votes.html


LOAD-DATE: September 15, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



925 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 15, 2012 Saturday


Sept. 15: Waiting on Wisconsin


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1105 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama's numbers in several swing states have risen, but Wisconsin, home to Paul D. Ryan, is a mystery, with no polls published there since the conventions.


Saturday was a much quieter day for polling than we've grown accustomed to - and the FiveThirtyEight forecast was unchanged to the decimal place, with President Obama given a 76.2 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, the same as in Friday's forecast.

There was slightly more action beneath the surface. Mr. Obama's projected margin of victory in the popular vote declined slightly to 3.3 percentage points - down from 3.5 points on Friday, and from a peak of just over 4 points immediately after the Democratic convention. However, Mr. Obama's Electoral College chances held steady in the forecast because of a strong poll for him in Pennsylvania.

At the very least, Mr. Obama's lead in the national polls no longer seems to be growing. If he gained additional ground following the attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya - or from Mitt Romney's response to it - there has been no sign of it in the most recent national tracking surveys.

Instead, the question is to what extent, if any, Mr. Obama's lead has declined. The Gallup national tracking poll now shows him ahead of Mr. Romney by four points - down from a peak of seven. And there has been a clearer reversal in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, which has now reverted to showing a two-point lead for Mr. Romney.

Two online tracking polls do not show any signs of decline for Mr. Obama, however. In the American Life Panel survey conducted by the RAND Corporation, Mr. Obama had a smaller bounce than in some other polls - but it has held steady over the past week, as he has continued to hold roughly a three-point lead among likely voters. The RAND poll differs from others in that it uses a panel of the same 3,500 respondents who are asked their opinions about the presidential race continually throughout the contest; it is therefore subject to less statistical noise than other surveys.

Mr. Obama also enjoyed his widest lead to date, seven points, in the last version of the Ipsos online tracking poll, which was published on Thursday - although the poll has not been updated over the past two days.

There's also been a large volume of state polling to sort through. Our view is that the consensus of the evidence from these surveys has shown pretty good numbers for Mr. Obama - but not great ones -  and tends to provide the most support for the hypothesis that Mr. Obama holds a lead in the national race of just under four percentage points right now.

The lone poll from a swing state to be published on Saturday was one to show more unambiguously impressive numbers for Mr. Obama, however. That survey, from The Philadelphia Inquirer, showed Mr. Obama with an 11-point lead there, up from 9 points before the conventions.

This is not the first poll to show a lead for Mr. Obama in Pennsylvania. In fact, the polling has been quite consistent there, especially as compared with other states like Virginia and Florida, in which there has been less agreement among the pollsters. Mr. Obama has held a lead in each of the last 23 Pennsylvania surveys, dating back to early February.

Intuitively, it might seem that the polling average is subject to less error when there is more consistency among its individual components. And in fact, I have found this to be the case in my empirical study of polls; less volatility in the polls implies more uncertainty about the eventual outcome.

But to the extent there has been a trend in Pennsylvania, it has favored Mr. Obama, with his lead slowly but steadily expanding over the past few months.

This may reflect Mr. Romney's on-again, off-again interest in competing in the state. According to The National Journal, Mr. Romney's campaign has spent nothing at all on advertisements in Pennsylvania since May 1, while outside groups backing him have spent a relative modest sum of about $10 million.

I wrote in July that I thought it was a mistake for Mr. Romney's campaign not to make a more vigorous effort to contest Pennsylvania. Moving the numbers in Pennsylvania is difficult, making it a high-risk proposition for a Republican who trails there - but it could also provide a huge reward for Mr. Romney, since losing the state would carve an enormous hole in Mr. Obama's re-election map.

But at this point, it may be too late. The forecast model now projects Mr. Obama to win Pennsylvania by about seven points. Given the consistency of his lead there, that translates into a 93 percent chance of victory on Election Day, according to the forecast.

It is in the blue-leaning states like Pennsylvania where Mr. Obama has arguably shown his best numbers since the convention.

Although New Jersey stretches the definition of a swing state, Mr. Obama had a safe-looking lead of 14 points in two polls published there since the conventions.

And in Michigan, two polls published last week showed Mr. Obama making gains. His lead expanded to 10 points from 3 in a poll published by the firm EPIC-MRA. In another Michigan survey, from the firm Foster McCollum White Baydoun, Mr. Obama reversed a four-point deficit to take a two-point lead. (That looks like a decent result for Mr. Romney despite Mr. Obama's gains, but it isn't really, since Foster McCollum White Baydoun has had an extremely strong Republican lean so far this cycle, showing results about 10 points more favorable to Mr. Romney than the consensus.)

All of this makes me very curious about another blue-leaning state, Wisconsin, which has not been polled at all since the conventions. Mr. Romney had appeared to draw Wisconsin to within about two points following his selection of Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate, making it among the most important states in the country.

But we just don't know what has happened to Wisconsin since then - whether the improvement that Mr. Romney had in the polls following his pick of Mr. Ryan was temporary, and likewise, how Mr. Obama's convention bounce has carried into the state.

If Wisconsin behaves more as true purple states like Virginia and Colorado, where Mr. Obama's bounce has been harder to perceive in the polls, Mr. Romney will be able to advance a stronger case that the damage he took during the Democratic convention has been tolerable. If the set of Wisconsin polls shows a clearer shift toward Mr. Obama, however, as in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Mr. Romney will be working from a rather thin electoral map.



LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



926 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 15, 2012 Saturday


Obama Ad Tries to Answer: Are You Better Off Than Four Years Ago?


BYLINE: JEREMY W. PETERS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 236 words



HIGHLIGHT: Recent polls have shown that more Americans feel that they are not better off. But President Obama is telling them that they are.


A new ad from President Obama confronts head on one of the most potentially damaging questions lingering over his re-election hopes: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Recent polls have shown that more Americans feel that they are not better off. But Mr. Obama is telling them that they are.

"Here's where we were in 2008," an announcer says in the ad, which is running in seven battleground states, including some of the hardest hit by the recession, like Nevada and Florida.

"The worst financial collapse since the Great Depression," a newscaster says. On the screen flashes "4.4 million jobs lost."

The ad then pivots to 2012 to make the argument that has been at the heart of Mr. Obama's case for re-election: that the country is moving in the right direction, albeit slowly. "We're not there yet, but the real question is, 'Whose plan is better for you?'"

Mr. Obama has been arguing not just that his plan to economic prosperity is moving in the right direction - forward, as his campaign slogan says - but that Mitt Romney's policies would take the country back.

This ad doubles down on that argument, pointing to Mr. Obama's plans to ask the wealthy to pay higher taxes and Mr. Romney's support for less business regulation. The ad also raises again a claim made in a study that Mr. Romney's campaign has disputed, saying that his tax plan would actually raise taxes on middle class families by $2,000.


LOAD-DATE: September 16, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



927 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 14, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final


Fossil Fuel Ads Dominate TV In Campaign


BYLINE: By ERIC LIPTON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS; Eric Lipton reported from Washington, and Clifford Krauss from Houston.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; THE ENERGY RUSH; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1742 words


WASHINGTON -- When Barack Obama first ran for president, being green was so popular that oil companies like Chevron were boasting about their commitment to renewable energy, and his Republican opponent, John McCain, supported action on global warming.

As Mr. Obama seeks re-election, that world is a distant memory. Some of the mightiest players in the oil, gas and coal industries are financing an aggressive effort to defeat him, or at least press him to adopt policies that are friendlier to fossil fuels. And the president's former allies in promoting wind and solar power and caps on greenhouse gases? They are disenchanted and sitting on their wallets.

This year's campaign on behalf of fossil fuels includes a surge in political contributions to Mitt Romney, attack ads questioning Mr. Obama's clean-energy agenda, and television spots that are not overtly partisan but criticize administration actions like new air pollution rules and the delay of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.

''Since Obama became president, gas prices have nearly doubled,'' said one advertisement by the American Energy Alliance, a group financed in part by oil executives. ''Tell Obama we can't afford his failing energy policies.''

With nearly two months before Election Day on Nov. 6, estimated spending on television ads promoting coal and more oil and gas drilling or criticizing clean energy has exceeded $153 million this year, according to an analysis by The New York Times of 138 ads on energy issues broadcast this year by the presidential campaigns, political parties, energy companies, trade associations and third-party spenders.

That tally is nearly four times the $41 million spent by clean-energy advocates, the Obama campaign and Democratic groups to defend the president's energy record or raise concerns about global warming and air pollution. The Times rated presidential campaign and national policy ads by whether they promoted fossil fuels or pushed clean energy and conservation, regardless of their sponsors, using ad and spending data compiled by Kantar Media, a company that tracks television advertising.

The lopsided nature of the energy messages this year contrasts sharply with 2008. Back then, global warming was a top public concern, and green ads greatly outnumbered those for fossil fuels, $152 million to $109 million, according to the analysis by The Times, which looked at 184 energy-related ads. In 2008, Chevron, one of the nation's leading oil companies, trumpeted its investments in geothermal power, and Mr. McCain spent millions of dollars on ads featuring solar panels and wind farms as part of a solution to global warming.

But climate change legislation died in Congress, Republicans gained a majority in the House, and pocketbook issues like the price of gasoline began dominating public discussion. After imposing a yearlong oil and gas drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico in response to the disastrous BP spill in 2010, President Obama recast himself as favoring an ''all of the above'' energy strategy, allowing the industry to drill offshore as deep as ever and moving to open up new regions like Alaska's Arctic waters.

The shift left many fossil fuel critics disillusioned and unwilling to do much to support the president. ''It's hard to think of any environmental activist who is enthused about anything Obama does these days,'' said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, which challenges the industry on drilling plans. ''Obama's explicit embrace of fossil fuels and implicit embrace of all the environmental degradation that entails are almost indistinguishable from the policies of the Bush administration.''

Mr. Obama's policy decisions on the Keystone pipeline and clean air rules did not win him friends in the fossil fuel world, either. Many of the industry's titans are going all out to elect Mr. Romney, who has promised to open up more land and coastline to oil and gas drilling, end wind and solar power subsidies and curb regulations that discourage burning coal for electricity.

''The stakes are high,'' said Steve Miller, the recently retired president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which has spent about $12 million on pro-coal television ads, according to the Kantar data. ''Our goal is to assure that whoever is elected will have seen a groundswell for coal in swing states.''

The Times analysis shows that ads with energy themes have played an outsized role in the 2012 campaign season, with energy earning more frequent mentions than every other issue except jobs and the economy.

Energy first emerged as a major advertising topic during the last presidential election. Back then, one of the biggest spenders was the Alliance for Climate Protection, an environmental group backed by former Vice President Al Gore that spent an estimated $32 million on ads urging legislation to combat global warming.

This year, the alliance, now called the Climate Reality Project, is not buying television ads at all, focusing instead on social media, training and organizing. ''Whatever we would spend, it would just be washed away in this sea of fossil fuel money,'' said Maggie L. Fox, the group's chief executive.

Other clean-energy players, particularly from the solar industry, are also keeping a low profile after Solyndra, a California solar module manufacturer that received half a billion dollars in federal loans, declared bankruptcy and became a favorite Republican target.

Certain environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, are still running their own television commercials this year in support of Mr. Obama's policies. And the wind industry is on a campaign to win renewal of a major tax credit. But ''we are being outgunned by orders of magnitude,'' said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. ''There is just no way we can compete with some of the richest companies in the history of the world.''

The American Petroleum Institute, backed by the nation's largest oil and gas companies, is the top energy spender this year with its ''I'm an energy voter'' campaign. Although the ads avoid explicitly endorsing any candidate, they clearly echo policy stands taken by Mr. Romney and the Republicans: opposing regulations that might slow down drilling and denouncing Mr. Obama's proposal to eliminate oil industry subsidies.

''New energy taxes could hurt drivers and families,'' one ad says. ''Better to produce more energy here, like oil and natural gas. That will help the economy. That's good for everyone.''

The petroleum institute has spent an estimated $37 million so far on television ads, according to the Kantar data, more than it spent in all of 2008. And it is just one of nearly two dozen groups -- including Americans for Prosperity, backed by the oil billionaire David H. Koch, and Crossroads GPS -- that are running advertisements this year advocating more fossil-fuel production or condemning spending by the Obama administration on solar and wind projects.

''These are companies and industries that clearly feel threatened,'' said Ken Goldstein, president of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. ''And when companies and industries with resources feel threatened, they air advertisements.''

The fossil fuel industries have also used more subtle tactics, like mobilizing miners to wear pro-coal hats and shirts at candidate events and placing a coal industry logo on the cars for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Nascar team.

Their trade associations have targeted swing states like Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania, where there are established operations like coal mines or fast-growing new efforts, like fields where natural gas is extracted through hydraulic fracturing, a technique that could face new restrictions from regulators.

''President Obama has placed a de facto embargo on energy production on American lands and shores,'' said Benjamin Cole, a spokesman for the American Energy Alliance, which expects to spend $7 million on television ads and other media to defeat Mr. Obama. ''It's irresponsible and overzealous.''

The imbalance in spending shows up on the campaign finance side as well.

Mr. Romney, the Republican National Committee and Mr. Romney's political action committee have taken in at least $13 million in campaign contributions from oil, gas and coal industry executives or their related groups.

By comparison, Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee have received less than $950,000 from the fossil fuel industry over the past two years, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The clean-energy industry has hardly made up the difference, with Mr. Obama directly collecting only about $78,000 from it so far, according to the center's data.

The surge in energy-related political spending partly reflects the rise in overall election spending after the Supreme Court lifted limits on corporate contributions in 2010. Mr. Romney, for example, has accepted $3 million in contributions from Oxbow, a coal company controlled by William Koch, a brother of David Koch.

At a $50,000-a-plate shrimp-and-steak lunch in Houston last month, Mr. Romney solicited advice on energy policy from scores of oil and gas executives.

The group -- which included Rex W. Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, and Harold G. Hamm of Continental Resources, a top adviser to the Romney campaign -- told Mr. Romney that the best thing he could do would be to reduce the regulatory burdens on the industry and permit more drilling on federal lands.

''There is a lot more at stake now,'' said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the Rice University energy program. ''The producers can drill a lot in the United States or they could lose the right to drill in the United States. It's a campaign about the E.P.A., how the president responds to a major accident, and it's about do we or don't we lease on federal lands.''

The Energy Rush: Articles in this series are examining the transformation of energy production in the United States. Previous articles, and an interactive sampler of political ads on energy policy: nytimes.com/energy

PHOTOS (A17)

CHART: A Shift in Energy Ads: Many energy ads in 2008 emphasized clean energy and conservation. Presidential and policy ads this year are more likely to promote policies that are friendly to fossil fuels. (Source: New York Times analysis of television ads and spending estimates from the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media) (A17)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/us/politics/fossil-fuel-industry-opens-wallet-to-defeat-obama.html


LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News; Series


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



928 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 14, 2012 Friday 9:15 PM EST


Shorthand;
What you might have missed.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 54 words


* Romney shifted his tone on foreign policy, and got silly for daytime TV. 

* Crossroads GPS played defense; Obama used Sotomayor in an ad. 

* The White House asked YouTube to review the anti-Muslim video.

* A challenge to Obama's ballot eligibility in Kansas was dropped. 

* And the Chicago teachers' strike appears to be ending.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



929 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 14, 2012 Friday 9:12 PM EST


Chicago teachers reach tentative deal with city to end strike;
The week-long standoff between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the teachers union could soon be coming to an end in the Windy City.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 526 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Why we aren't moving Ohio to 'lean Obama'

What a Todd Akin win would say about politics

Senate battle looking like a nail-biter (again)

Why 'are you better off' is tough for Obama, in two charts

Former South Dakota governor launches 2014 Senate exploratory committee

Obama, Romney campaigns struggle to earn public trust

The most overrated stat of the 2012 election

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* Striking Chicago teachers have reached a tentative deal with the city to end the week-long standoff and send children back to school on Monday morning.

* President Obama runs about even with Mitt Romney in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll of probable voters, which shows the Democrat at 49 percent and the Republican at 46 percent.

* Obama is airing a Spanish-language TV ad in Florida featuring a Puerto Rican attorney praising the president's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and noting Mitt Romney's opposition to her. "Mitt Romney was opposed to Sotomayor. He offended me when he stated he would have voted against her nomination," the attorney says in the ad. Obama also released a TV ad casting Romney as weak on China (Romney leveled a similar charge against the president in a spot released Thursday).

* The White House asked YouTube to review whether an anti-Muslim video that has been blamed for inciting violent protests in the Middle East violates the site's "terms of use" policy. The video was still on YouTube as of Friday afternoon.

* Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) new TV ad says Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren is "being dishonest about who I am and what I stand for." On Thursday, Warren released her first TV ad of the campaign attacking Brown. The Republican also released an ad touting his support for abortion rights, a spot that was blasted by the Warren camp and the pro-abortion rights group EMILY's List.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* Even more evidence of former president Bill Clinton's widespread popularity: According to the New York Times/CBS News poll, two-thirds of voters say they have a favorable view of him while just 25 percent say the have a negative view of him. Clinton's marks are as good as they have ever been in the 20 years since he first ran for president.

* Ending Spending Action Fund, a super PAC that mainly supports Republican candidates, endorsed Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) in the Ohio Senate race. The group pledged a six-figure independent expenditure commitment on his behalf and released a radio ad pitching Mandel as an experienced candidate.

* Just 13 (!) percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing - the lowest marks Gallup has ever measured this far into an election year.

* Former first lady Laura Bush will host a fundraiser for Romney at her home next week. Ann Romney will attend the event. Former president George W. Bush will not be there.

THE FIX MIX:

Jennifer Granholm on The Dating Game.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



930 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 14, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 65 words


Ad watch

Mitt Romney released a new TV commercial that says: "Under Obama, we've lost over half-a-million manufacturing jobs. And for the first time, China is beating us." While the campaign didn't specify where the ad will run, a GOP media buyer said Romney just bought nearly $460,000 worth of air time in Ohio for the next four days.

- Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



931 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 14, 2012 Friday 8:12 PM EST


Stocks surge on Fed's QE3 plan


BYLINE: Brad Plumer


SECTION: A section; Pg. A13


LENGTH: 808 words


Financial markets soared Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced its new program to buy financial assets to inject money into the U.S. economy.

The surge began midday, as the central bank unveiled its third round of quantitative easing, or QE3. The S&P 500 climbed 1.6 percent, to close at 1459.99. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 206 points, or 1.5 percent, to 13,539.86. Both indicators closed at their highest levels since December 2007.

For weeks now, financial markets have been expecting the Fed to take some action to stimulate the economy. But few observers expected that the central bank's moves would be so dramatic. Previous quantitative easing efforts have been limited jolts, but the Fed is now saying that it will continue to act until the labor market improves "substantially." That open-ended commitment was a radical break with past practice.

Even as Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was explaining himself, economists and politicians were assessing the scope and meaning of the surprising news.

l Michael Feroli, chief economist of JPMorgan Chase, noted that Bernanke has radically changed his approach to monetary policy: "Whereas past actions were, by and large, one-off adrenaline shots, today's actions more fully embraced conditional commitment as the guiding principle behind Fed strategy." Feroli predicted that the Fed would eventually move to an explicit rule where it promises to engage in stimulus measures until, say, unemployment reaches a certain level.

l Economist Mark Thomanoted that Bernanke may have been swayed by a critical paper written in early September by influential monetary theorist Michael Woodford of Columbia University. That paper, Thoma wrote, showed that "the Fed has the most impact on the economy when it credibly commits to future actions. Thus, according to Woodford, it is not the quantitative easing itself that helps the economy (i.e. how many assets the Fed holds), but rather it's the commitment to continue purchasing assets until the unemployment rate improves substantially that matters."

l In a statement, Woodford himself praised Bernanke's efforts: "They are still not as explicit about the conditions that will justify policy normalization as I would have recommended, but this is nonetheless an important and useful step, which should be more effective in increasing confidence that the economy will recover."

l Scott Sumner, an economist at Bentley Universitywho has long argued for more aggressive Fed action, said the market rally proves the Fed can boost the economy merely by shifting expectations: "Even a very vague and inadequate promise from the Fed was enough to boost markets significantly." He also predicted that the Fed appeared to be taking "baby steps" toward a new approach to monetary policy in which it targets a certain level of nominal growth.

l David Wessel of the Wall Street Journalpointed out the gloomy news: Even after more easing, the Fed is still predicting that the economy will remain in rough shape for years: "Even with QE3, Fed sees jobless rate above full-employment (5.2%-6.0%) through 2015."

l Given the weak economy, that might mean the Fed will have to keep QE3 alive for years. An analysis from Capital Economicsfound that, judging by the Fed's own projections, the central bank will have to buy more than $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities over the next three years just to get unemployment down to 7 percent.

l At his news conference Thursday, Bernanke agreed that "monetary policy is not a panacea." He also pointed out that Congress could still squelch the recovery by allowing the series of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff to kick in at the end of the year. "If the fiscal cliff isn't addressed, as I've said, I don't think our tools are strong enough to offset the effects of a major fiscal shock, so we'd have to think about what to do in that contingency."

l Mitt Romney's campaigncriticized the move: "The Federal Reserve's announcement of a third round of quantitative easing is further confirmation that President Obama's policies have not worked. After four years of stagnant growth, falling incomes, rising costs, and persistently high unemployment, the American economy doesn't need more artificial and ineffective measures. We should be creating wealth, not printing dollars."

l But Justin Wolfers, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, argued that if Bernanke was trying to help out Obama, he had an odd way of showing it: "There's no sense in which the Fed's move today was political. If they wanted to help Obama, they would have done this months ago."

plumerb@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



932 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 14, 2012 Friday 7:19 PM EST


Senate battle looking like a nail-biter (again);
As the map comes into focus, it's clear that Election Day could be very interesting -- just like in 2006 and 2008.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1324 words


In 2006, we didn't know whether Democrats had won the Senate from Republicans until a day after the election, when a razor-close Virginia race was finally decided.

In 2008, we waited nearly eight months for a Minnesota recount to determine whether Democrats had attained a 60th seat, which would allow them to override any Republican filibuster.

Get ready for another nail-biter in 2012.

What seemed to be a majority-making map for Republicans at the start of the cycle has started to come into focus in recent weeks, and it looks like whoever holds the Senate could very well do it with 50 or 51 seats. Which means Election Day - and perhaps the days following it - will carry significant drama.

Democrats are favored to takeover a seat in Maine - so long as independent former governor Angus King caucuses with them - while Republicans have an edge in North Dakota and Nebraska and good chances in three other states: Montana, Virginia and Wisconsin, where former governor Tommy Thompson (R) leads in all recent polling.

The GOP needs to win a net of either four seats for an outright majority or three seats and the presidency, in which case a Vice President Paul Ryan would be the tie-breaker in a 50-50 Senate.

So, assuming they lose Maine and win Nebraska and North Dakota, they would need to win two or three of those other toss-up states, depending on the result of the presidential campaign.

Of course, this calculus will change, and several other seats could work their way into the equation.

While Republicans have gotten some good news in recent weeks for two of their most vulnerable incumbents - Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) - those seats are hardly off the table. And if Democrats win either, it will be very tough for Republicans to win a majority.

In addition, we're adding two new states this month to our Line of the 10 states most likely to flip control: Connecticut and Indiana. And if they continue to poll like toss-ups, that will throw a wrench in things.

(Those two states were added because we're taking off Missouri and New Mexico. It's become pretty clear that GOP Rep. Todd Akin is staying put in Missouri, which is great news for Democrats; and in New Mexico, Republicans have reportedly canceled their ad buy in a blue-leaning state they had hoped to make competitive.)

To the Line! (As always, these races are rated from most likely to flip - No. 1 - to least likely - No. 10.)

10. Connecticut (Democratic-controlled): This one sticks out on this list like a sore thumb. Do Republicans really have a chance in the strongly blue Nutmeg State? At this point, the answer to that question has to be "yes". As we wrote this week in moving this race from "solid Democratic" to "lean Democratic," Republicans have renewed hope just two years after their nominee, self-funder Linda McMahon, lost by double digits in another open seat race. McMahon is back, and Republicans think she's better this time. She'll need to be. The attacks are coming, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee just spent its first money here - a sign of the fact that this race is worth keeping an eye on. (Previous ranking: N/A)

9. Indiana (Republican-controlled): Indiana, like Connecticut, is expected to be non-competitive at the presidential level - and also at the gubernatorial level. But every poll we've seen has shown the Senate race neck-and-neck. As with Republicans in Connecticut, Democrats see this race as a potential spoiler just two years after their hopes were dashed in another open seat race they talked a big game about. And as with McMahon, there's a premium on what kind of campaign Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) can run. (Previous ranking: N/A)

8. Nevada (R): The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hasn't lost faith in Rep. Shelley Berkley (D) amid her ethics woes. The committee is pouring another $750,000 into advertising, on top of a previously placed $2.3 million reservation. Republicans believe that in a close race, the ethics cloud hanging over Berkley's head could make the difference for Heller. The presidential race also looks very close in this state, so each side's turnout operation will be crucial for both elections. (Previous ranking: 9)

7. Massachusetts (R): Elizabeth Warren's rebooted ad strategy could be just what she needs to turn the race in her favor, but it's also a sign that what she has been doing so far hasn't worked as well as she'd like. Warren's latest ad is a boxing-themed spot that takes aim at Brown's record - a departure from previous spots which were positive and mainly featured Warren addressing the camera. Brown's own ads, which feature his signature pickup truck, appear to be helping him. Personality could go a long way with the independent voters both candidates need to win, and each side is trying to capitalize. (Previous ranking: 7)

6. Virginia (D): Just about every poll released on this race has shown a neck-and-neck contest, and the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey is no exception. That poll showed former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine and former senator George Allen (R) deadlocked at 46 percent. But the same poll showed Obama with a slight lead over Romney. Kaine lagged behind Obama in the poll among non-white voters by 10 points. It's ground he will need to make up in November to put him over the top against Allen. (Previous ranking: 8)

5. Wisconsin (D): Thompson continues to look good in a state that is increasingly looking like a toss-up state at the presidential level. Four polls in August showed him leading Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D) by between five and 11 points. The question is whether that's simply because he's a well-known former four-term governor - a resume unmatched by any other Senate candidate. If Romney can come close to winning or carrying the state in November, it will be very hard for Baldwin to beat Thompson. (Previous ranking: 6)

4. Montana (D): Check out theReal Clear Politics average of polling in this race and you'll see why it's so difficult to handicap. Rep. Denny Rehberg takes 49 percent while Sen. Jon Tester (D) takes 48 percent - a statistical dead heat that's been in place since Rehberg announced he was running. The race tilts slightly to Rehberg - wethinks - due solely to the fact that Mitt Romney is likely to carry the Last Best Place convincingly. (Previous ranking: 4)

3. North Dakota (D): Both sides now acknowledge that the open seat race to replace retiring Sen. Kent Conrad (D) is closer than expected. But you've got to remember that this is North Dakota in a presidential year, meaning that former state attorney general Heidi Heitkamp (D) is going to have to run ahead of her national ticket by (at least) 6 to 8 percentage points to win. Rep. Rick Berg (R) is not nearly the quality candidate that then-Gov. John Hoeven (R) was when he cruised to a Senate victory in 2010, but the congressman likely doesn't have to be. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Nebraska (D): At this point, the only drama left in the race is centered around how much former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) will lose by. Deb Fischer can start measuring the drapes barring some sort of catastrophic mistake. (Previous ranking: 2)

1. Maine (R): Republicans insist this is not a lost cause and that Secretary of State Charlie Summers could shoot the gap if King - the heavy favorite - and Democratic nominee Cynthia Dill split the left-leaning vote enough. But Dill needs to take more than the single digits she's managing in early polls of the general election. Conservative groups have started spending some money hoping to move the numbers. If they can't do it in the coming days and weeks, though, expect them to pull out, with King being on pace for a coronation. (Previous ranking: 1)

Sean Sullivan and Chris Cillizza contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



933 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 14, 2012 Friday 7:15 PM EST


Ad Watch: Romney sent jobs to China;
"Romney's never stood up to China," new Obama ad says. "All he's done is send them our jobs."


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 86 words


Obama for America, "The Cheaters"

What it says: "Romney's never stood up to China. All he's done is send them our jobs."

What it means: If Romney wants to talk about China, we'll just call him an outsourcer again.  

Who will see it: The ad will air in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Fact Checker: Our Fact Checker has repeatedly deemed Obama's outsourcing claims false.  


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



934 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 14, 2012 Friday 4:41 PM EST


Ad watch: Crossroads plays defense;
New Crossroads GPS ad suggests Obama attacks are working.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 181 words


Crossroads GPS, "Broke"

What it says: "Obama: Dishonest on taxes because he has failed on jobs."

What it means: That Republicans think Obama's attacks are working. Crossroads GPS, a Republican-aligned non-profit, usually stays on the attack in ads. This one is defending Mitt Romney against a recent Obama spot charging that the GOP nominee would raise taxes on the middle class. That charge is based on a study from the Tax Policy Center, disputed by Republicans because it relies on assumptions about Romney's plans. 

Who will see it: It's a one-week, $5.3 million buy in the same states where Obama's ad is running - Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

Factchecker: In August, our Fact Checker deemed Obama's argument true. "To some extent, the Romney campaign has been hoist with its own petard by refusing to provide sufficient detail that shows how the numbers add up in Romney's tax and budget plans. So we are left with the judgment of a respected and independent third party," he wrote.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



935 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 14, 2012 Friday 4:32 PM EST


Obama uses Sotomayor in ads;
Short summary of story


BYLINE: Peter Wallsten


LENGTH: 234 words


Puerto Ricans are one of the biggest swing voting blocs in Florida, a fast-growing Hispanic population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, mostly centered in the Orlando area. Many of them voted for GOP President Bush in 2004. They backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his campaigns, but also voted for Al Gore in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008.

Now the battle for their votes is heating up, with Obama's re-election campaign hoping to reignite support in that community by reminding voters of one of his biggest decisions - putting a Puerto Rican woman on the Supreme Court.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is featured in a new ad airing in Florida and released Friday. As images of Obama and Sotomayor flash on the screen, a local lawyer, Nydia Menendez, is shown expressing disgust that Republican nominee Mitt Romney had opposed Sotomayor's nomination.

"He offended me when he stated he would have voted against her nomination," Menendez said, "and now he wants our vote for president?"'

The ad buy comes after one top Obama pollster, Sergio Bendixen, told Hispanic delegates to last week's Democratic National Convention that the president was lagging in his support from Puerto Ricans. Internal polling from July showed Obama winning the group over Romney by 54-32 percent,  but Bendixen told the delegates that Obama's share of the Puerto Rican vote would have to reach into the 70s for him to win Florida.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



936 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 14, 2012 Friday 2:06 PM EST


China pushes back on Romney ad: 'False ... foolish';
Chinese news agency calls Romney comments "as false as they are foolish."


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 160 words


The AP reports that Mitt Romney's latest ad - in which he declares that "China is beating us" and President Obama has "failed to stop China's cheating" - isgetting pushback from authorities in Beijing.  

The official New China news agency responded Friday with an editorial calling Romney's remarks "as false as they are foolish" and saying that it is "ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politician's wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics."

The editorial warned that if Romney's "mud-slinging tactics were to become U.S. government policies, a trade war would be very likely to break out between the world's top two economies, which would be catastrophic enough to both sides and the already groaning global economy."

Chinese media also criticized Romney before the Republican National Convention, with China Daily calling his policy an "outdated manifestation of a Cold War mentality."


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



937 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 14, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 58 words


Ad watch

Mitt Romney released a new TV commercial that says: "Under Obama, we've lost over half-a-million manufacturing jobs. And for the first time, China is beating us." While the campaign didn't specify where the ad will run, a GOP media buyer said Romney just bought nearly $460,000 worth of air time in Ohio for the next four days.

- Sean Sullivan


LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



938 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 14, 2012 Friday
Suburban Edition


Stocks surge on Fed's QE3 plan


BYLINE: Brad Plumer


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A13


LENGTH: 774 words


Financial markets soared Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced its new program to buy financial assets to inject money into the U.S. economy.

The surge began midday, as the central bank unveiled its third round of quantitative easing, or QE3. The S&P 500 climbed 1.6 percent, to close at 1459.99. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 206 points, or 1.5 percent, to 13,539.86. Both indicators closed at their highest levels since December 2007.

For weeks now, financial markets have been expecting the Fed to take some action to stimulate the economy. But few observers expected that the central bank's moves would be so dramatic. Previous quantitative easing efforts have been limited jolts, but the Fed is now saying that it will continue to act until the labor market improves "substantially." That open-ended commitment was a radical break with past practice.

Even as Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was explaining himself, economists and politicians were assessing the scope and meaning of the surprising news.

lMichael Feroli, chief economist of JPMorgan Chase, noted that Bernanke has radically changed his approach to monetary policy: "Whereas past actions were, by and large, one-off adrenaline shots, today's actions more fully embraced conditional commitment as the guiding principle behind Fed strategy." Feroli predicted that the Fed would eventually move to an explicit rule where it promises to engage in stimulus measures until, say, unemployment reaches a certain level.

lEconomist Mark Thoma noted that Bernanke may have been swayed by a critical paper written in early September by influential monetary theorist Michael Woodford of Columbia University. That paper, Thoma wrote, showed that "the Fed has the most impact on the economy when it credibly commits to future actions. Thus, according to Woodford, it is not the quantitative easing itself that helps the economy (i.e. how many assets the Fed holds), but rather it's the commitment to continue purchasing assets until the unemployment rate improves substantially that matters."

l In a statement,Woodford himself praised Bernanke's efforts: "They are still not as explicit about the conditions that will justify policy normalization as I would have recommended, but this is nonetheless an important and useful step, which should be more effective in increasing confidence that the economy will recover."

lScott Sumner, an economist at Bentley University who has long argued for more aggressive Fed action, said the market rally proves the Fed can boost the economy merely by shifting expectations: "Even a very vague and inadequate promise from the Fed was enough to boost markets significantly." He also predicted that the Fed appeared to be taking "baby steps" toward a new approach to monetary policy in which it targets a certain level of nominal growth.

lDavid Wessel of the Wall Street Journal pointed out the gloomy news: Even after more easing, the Fed is still predicting that the economy will remain in rough shape for years: "Even with QE3, Fed sees jobless rate above full-employment (5.2%-6.0%) through 2015."

l Given the weak economy, that might mean the Fed will have to keep QE3 alive for years. An analysis fromCapital Economics found that, judging by the Fed's own projections, the central bank will have to buy more than $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities over the next three years just to get unemployment down to 7 percent.

l At his news conference Thursday,Bernanke agreed that "monetary policy is not a panacea." He also pointed out that Congress could still squelch the recovery by allowing the series of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff to kick in at the end of the year. "If the fiscal cliff isn't addressed, as I've said, I don't think our tools are strong enough to offset the effects of a major fiscal shock, so we'd have to think about what to do in that contingency."

lMitt Romney's campaign criticized the move: "The Federal Reserve's announcement of a third round of quantitative easing is further confirmation that President Obama's policies have not worked. After four years of stagnant growth, falling incomes, rising costs, and persistently high unemployment, the American economy doesn't need more artificial and ineffective measures. We should be creating wealth, not printing dollars."

l ButJustin Wolfers, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, argued that if Bernanke was trying to help out Obama, he had an odd way of showing it: "There's no sense in which the Fed's move today was political. If they wanted to help Obama, they would have done this months ago."

plumerb@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 14, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



939 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 13, 2012 Thursday
Late Edition - Final


Ryan Plays Up Wisconsin Pride as Obama TV Ads Begin in State


BYLINE: By TRIP GABRIEL and JEFF ZELENY; Trip Gabriel reported from De Pere, Wis., and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 18


LENGTH: 814 words


DE PERE, Wis. -- Paul D. Ryan is running for the second-highest office in the land, but a voter might have confused him for a state candidate here on Wednesday, so frequent were his Wisconsin references as he sought to maximize his native appeal.

He mentioned a local purveyor of ''this really great jelly,'' mentioned that he would later be interviewed by ''a young woman from Appleton,'' meaning the Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, and even shouted, ''Go, Packers.''

''Pretty nice to have a cheesehead on the ticket, isn't it?'' Gov. Scott Walker said in introducing Mr. Ryan at a rally near Green Bay.

The appeals to state pride were laid on thick because Mr. Ryan's addition to the Republican ticket comes as Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes are becoming increasingly competitive in the closing phase of the presidential race.

The Obama campaign on Wednesday began running its first television commercials in the state, three days after Mitt Romney began his own advertising there. Ads from Republican and Democratic outside groups are also running.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden is scheduled to visit the state on Thursday.

For Mr. Romney, Wisconsin offers one of the best chances to fight on President Obama's terrain and expand the map of battleground states. Republican strategists say that Wisconsin appears to present a better opportunity for Mr. Romney than Michigan or Pennsylvania.

A victory in Wisconsin could help create a new path for Mr. Romney to reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, easing the need to win both Ohio and Virginia. A victory in Iowa and Wisconsin, for example, would mean 16 electoral votes, more than Virginia's 13. If New Hampshire is added to the Romney column, that would give him 20 electoral votes, surpassing Ohio's 18.

The addition of Mr. Ryan to the Republican ticket has increased the party's interest in the state, but the changing political dynamic in Wisconsin also offers encouragement to Mr. Romney. The state has gone through considerable political tumult since Mr. Obama won the state by 14 percentage points in 2008.

The Republican Party was invigorated by midterm election wins in 2010, which were ratified when Governor Walker survived a recall attempt in June, despite a well-organized and well-financed Democratic attempt to oust him.

''The truth of the matter is Wisconsin was in play the day Walker won that recall,'' said Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign's political director.

But history rests with Democrats, who have carried the state in the last six presidential races. However, the 2000 and 2004 elections were very close.

On Wednesday, Mr. Ryan began with a moment of silence for the American ambassador to Libya and three aides killed in Benghazi the day before. Echoing Mr. Romney, he accused the Obama administration of not projecting sufficient strength abroad to deter America's enemies.

''If you show weakness, if you show moral equivocation,'' then ''adventurism among our adversaries will increase,'' Mr. Ryan said. ''We don't want a world climate where our adversaries are so tempted to test us.''

''That is, unfortunately, the path we are on right now,'' he added.

Mr. Ryan also criticized Mr. Obama as supporting ''devastating'' defense cuts, including the deep automatic cuts set to begin next year because of Congress's failure to reach a bipartisan agreement on trimming the deficit.

''I won't get into the policy wonkery of it -- the sequester,'' Mr. Ryan said, without mentioning that he, too, voted for the automatic cuts as part of a budget-enforcing mechanism on Congress in 2011.

In his new Wisconsin ad, Mr. Obama speaks directly to the camera in a message aimed at middle-class voters, outlining what he calls ''a choice between two very different plans for our country.'' Mr. Romney's ad criticizes the president for the federal budget deficit and promises voters ''a better future.''

Mr. Ryan had not held a town-hall-style rally, as he did here, since he became the Republican running mate, and the format -- in a hockey arena before the ice was laid for the season -- lent a more intimate feel than usual.

Mr. Ryan mentioned details of the campaign he had rarely shared. He described how he had ''long conversations'' when Mr. Romney asked him to be his vice-presidential candidate. ''He said: 'You have the kind of experience as a reformer taking on these big problems, this fiscal crisis, this budget crisis. You have the expertise that complements mine. Join me.' ''

Calling on one man, Mr. Ryan peered at his clothing and asked, referring to a brand of fishing tackle: ''What is that, a Shimano? Just trying to read the logo. I'm a big fisherman.''

PHOTOS: Representative Paul D. Ryan at a campaign event on Wednesday in De Pere, Wis., where he emphasized his local roots. Both parties see the state's 10 electoral votes as increasingly in play this fall. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY OZIER MUHAMMAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/us/politics/ryan-stumping-in-wisconsin-stresses-local-roots.html


LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



940 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 13, 2012 Thursday


On the Trail in Colorado, Obama Tries Balancing Campaigning With Mideast Events


BYLINE: JIM RUTENBERG


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 530 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama spent the second day of what was to be an upbeat swing through the politically vital Mountain West on Thursday balancing the somber tone that a foreign policy crisis demands and the hyper-partisan rhetoric that eight thousand Coloradoans came to hear.


GOLDEN, Colo. - President Obama spent the second day of what was to be an upbeat swing through the politically vital Mountain West on Thursday balancing the somber tone that a foreign policy crisis demands and the hyper-partisan rhetoric that eight thousand Coloradoans came to hear.

At an outdoor rally under a clear blue sky here, where the crowd was so excited that it cheered a flock of squawking geese overhead before the president spoke, Mr. Obama began with a somber reminder that four Americans had been killed in Benghazi, Libya, more than 6,000 miles away.

"Obviously, our hearts are heavy this week,'' Mr. Obama said, as a hush fell over the crowd. But to a wider television audience he vowed: "I want people around the world to hear me: to all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished." He added, "no act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America."

But he went from there into the new, convention-tested stump speech he would have given had anti-American protests not broken out in Libya and Egypt on Tuesday, and in Yemen on Thursday.

The president drew cheers for mentioning Bill Clinton and his convention speech line about the Republicans' budget arithmetic and laughs when he riffed that Republicans are seeking to solve all the nation's problems with tax cuts: "You need to make a restaurant reservation, you don't need a new iPhone: there's a tax cut for that," he said.

One word that went unspoken here on Thursday: Romney. Instead, Mr. Obama made reference to his "opponent,'' which aides said was prompted by the president's desire to remain mindful of the tone of his political rhetoric amid the events in the Middle East.

Aides also said they wanted to stay out of the way as Mr. Romney continues to take questions about his initial tone on the crisis and the administration's response to it.

White House officials said they were planning to avoid getting drawn into a political argument over the killings in Libya, and telegraphed comfort with the campaign debate moving onto foreign policy turf, which they consider better for them than Mr. Romney, whose campaign has rested mostly on his economic arguments.

But it was not all smooth sailing. On the way to the event here Mr. Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, was forced to address questions about Mr. Obama's comments to the Spanish language network Telemundo that he does not consider the new government of Egypt either an ally or a foe.

Mr. Carney said: "The president, in diplomatic and legal terms, was speaking correctly. We do not have an alliance treaty with Egypt. Ally is a legal term of art. As I said, we do not have a mutual defense treaty with Egypt, like we do, for example, with our NATO allies. But as the president has said, Egypt is a longstanding and close partner of the United States and we have built on that foundation in supporting Egypt's transition to democracy and working with the new government."



LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



941 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 13, 2012 Thursday


A Trip With Beyonce or on Hair Force One? You Decide.


BYLINE: EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 372 words



HIGHLIGHT: The presidential campaigns got creative with their pleas for cash, trying to grab supporters' attention after a summer filled with increasingly desperate fundraising e-mails.


First came the e-mail from Beyoncé Knowles: want to fly to New York to hang out with her and President Obama?

Then a message from Mitt Romney arrived: how about spending a day with him on the campaign plane his wife calls "Hair Force One"?

On Thursday, the presidential campaigns got creative with their pleas for cash, trying to grab supporters' attention after a summer filled with increasingly desperate fund-raising e-mails. Both campaigns sent out messages asking for small donations in exchange for face time with the candidates.

Supporters have received a barrage of e-mails from the campaigns in recent months with subject lines ranging from the overly familiar "Dinner?" and "Rain Check?" (from President Obama) to the gloomy: "A laundry list of broken promises" (from Mr. Romney). But a personal message from Beyoncé? Now that might get your attention.

With the subject line "I don't usually e-mail you," Ms. Knowles invited supporters to donate and enter their names to meet her, her husband, Jay-Z, and the president in New York, with airfare and hotel included. The e-mail was signed "Love, Beyoncé."

Mr. Romney's e-mail, titled "Fly With Me," attempted to use a little humor. The note said that his wife, Ann, liked to joke that the campaign plane should be called "Hair Force One," a reference to Mr. Romney's well-groomed locks. Those who donated could win a trip aboard the plane for a day of campaigning.

"And, who knows," Mr. Romney added, "maybe you and I will come up with a better name for the campaign plane."

The Obama campaign has been playing catch-up in the fund-raising game. On Monday, the campaign announced that it had raised $114 million in August, noting that the amount was more than the Romney campaign for the first time since April.

The Romney campaign and the Republican National Convention said they raised more than $111 million in August. Both campaigns have touted the money they have earned from smaller donors to prove their grassroots appeal.



LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



942 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(You're the Boss)


September 13, 2012 Thursday


Do Romney's Budget Pledges Threaten S.B.A. Loans?


BYLINE: ROBB MANDELBAUM


SECTION: BUSINESS; smallbusiness


LENGTH: 1101 words



HIGHLIGHT: The Romney campaign declined to comment either on whether S.B.A. appropriations would be squeezed or, more generally, on the agency's place in Mr. Romney's small-business agenda.


Should Mitt Romney become president next year, he will face a difficult question pitting his eagerness to help small businesses against his eagerness to shrink the government: What to do with the Small Business Administration

Since taking office in 2009, President Obama is on track to nearly double the S.B.A.'s budget. But apart from a burst of stimulus spending in 2009 and 2010 to increase lending temporarily, the infusion has not expanded the S.B.A.'s reach - it has merely allowed the agency to maintain its existing loan volume. Much of the S.B.A.'s mission is to guarantee loans to small companies that banks would otherwise not make, and steep cuts would likely force the agency to turn away borrowers.

While Mr. Romney's campaign has been short on specifics about how it plans to achieve a "smaller, simpler, smarter" federal government, it does make two promises on its Web site that could affect the S.B.A.:

Send Congress a bill on Day One that cuts nonsecurity discretionary spending by 5 percent across the board
Pass the House Republican Budget proposal, rolling back President Obama's government expansion by capping nonsecurity discretionary spending below 2008 levels

Either proposal could make it harder for small-business borrowers to receive government-backed loans, because federal law requires the government to set aside money to cover the cost of loans that it estimates will go bad, and the recession has driven those costs up by making small-business loans much riskier. Before the recession, fees on borrowers and lenders paid for the cost of loan defaults, but those fees have reached a cap set by law and can't be increased unless Congress changes the law. Instead, since 2010, Congress has appropriated a subsidy to make up for the difference between the fees received and the allocation for defaults.

Largely because of the subsidy, the S.B.A.'s appropriation for small-business programs (that is, excluding funds for disaster loans, which the S.B.A. also administers) in 2013 will likely approach $1 billion, nearly double the appropriation in 2008. Loan subsidies for the agency's two main loan programs, which cost taxpayers nothing in 2008, will grow to somewhere around $340 million, enough to support $22 billion in financing.

There is a fairly direct correlation between the size of the subsidy and the amount of lending - if the subsidy shrinks by 5 percent, lending will fall by roughly the same amount. That said, estimating the effects of Mr. Romney's proposed 5 percent cut is a little complicated, if only because it is unclear what the starting point for the cut would be. Is it the president's proposed budget for 2013? Is it the actual appropriation for 2012? Is it something else? (The Romney campaign declined to clarify.)

Taking 5 percent off what the Obama administration has proposed - and the House and Senate have largely accepted - for the S.B.A. in fiscal year 2013 would probably amount to a modest cut, but could still shut out some borrowers unless the agency is able to move some money around. If, on the other hand, Mr. Romney chooses to cut 5 percent from the 2012 budget, S.B.A. lending could be decimated. According to an Obama administration budget analyst who ran the numbers -- but insisted on anonymity -- the agency would be reduced to guaranteeing just $13.3 billion in loans in 2013. That is a third less than the $19.4 billion it has approved so far this year.

And slashing spending to below the level in 2008, when there were no subsidies, could effectively end S.B.A. lending. In the current economic environment, the loan programs cannot legally operate without a subsidy appropriated by Congress. (The S.B.A. will likely have some subsidy funds leftover at the end of 2012 that it can use next year, but once that money is spent, it will need a new appropriation to continue making loans.)

There appears to be little enthusiasm in Congress for raising those fees to substitute for the subsidy. In a budget letter this year, Republicans on the House Small Business Committee opposed both raising loan fees and cutting subsidies. The House, in its appropriation bill for 2013, actually passed a subsidy that was even larger than the president requested to support more loans.

But in an e-mail statement, Representative Sam Graves, the committee chairman, supported a 5 percent budget cut for the S.B.A. - even from the agency's actual 2012 appropriation. "Our massive debt is acting as an ominous cloud over our economy, therefore, cutting the federal budget is necessary to help provide a better economic environment for small-business growth," he said. "We can cut a lot of fat in every agency, including the S.B.A. There are some core programs that are useful, but there's no question that there's 5 percent of waste in agencies and numerous duplicative programs with little to show for the taxpayers' generous investment."

The Agenda sought the Romney campaign's comment on the squeeze the S.B.A. might face and more generally on the agency's place in Mr. Romney's small-business agenda. The response from a campaign spokeswoman, Amanda Henneberg, didn't mention the S.B.A. "Governor Romney has proposed bold policies that champion small business and support the economic growth needed to help create 12 million jobs in his first term," Ms. Henneberg said in an e-mailed statement. "Chief among these policy proposals is reducing taxes on job creation through individual and corporate tax reform, stopping the increase in regulation that tangles job creators in red tape, and replacing Obamacare with real health care reform that controls cost and improves care."

The S.B.A. also went unmentioned at the Republican convention two weeks ago, which dedicated an entire night to the theme of "We Built It" - a dig at President Obama's "you didn't build that" moment in July. But even so, the choice of speakers that evening illustrated the agency's importance, perhaps unintentionally. Three of the four small-business owners who proclaimed on the dais that night that they built their businesses themselves have borrowed money with guarantees from the S.B.A. And the fourth sought business counseling from a small-business development center and a women's business center -- both organizations that are supported by grants from the S.B.A. and that might see less funding if Mr. Romney wins and follows through on his campaign pledges.



LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



943 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 13, 2012 Thursday
FINAL EDITION


Obama bounce: The convention -- or the ads?


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A


LENGTH: 398 words


President Obama got a bounce in post-convention polls, but it may not be the result of his speech; it could be because he ran more than twice as many ads as his opponent.

The Wesleyan Media Project reported Wednesday that Obama and groups supporting him aired 40,000 ads during the two-week period of the political conventions, compared with 18,000 ads for Republican Mitt Romney and groups backing the GOP nominee.

Obama leads Romney by 7 percentage points in the most recent Gallup Poll, 50%-43%. In Gallup's last pre-convention poll, Obama led 47%-46%.

The lopsided ad buy is unusual: to date in the campaign, the ad race has been close to even, according to Wesleyan's data. Since April 25, Obama and his allies have run 315,000 ads, compared with 303,000 for Romney and his team.

Both campaigns are targeting swing states such as Colorado, Ohio and Virginia. During the convention period from Aug. 26 to Sept. 8, the heaviest ad deluge was in Denver, where the two sides ran a combined 3,000 ads.

The Romney campaign has relied on advertising help from outside groups. More than half, or 54%, of the ads supporting Romney or criticizing Obama were run by outside groups, while 90% of ads from Obama's side came from the incumbent's re-election campaign. During the conventions, for instance, the conservative group Americans for Prosperity ran 7,354 ads at a cost of $5.6 million. The Romney campaign itself ran 4,503 ads, spending $3.3 million.

That ratio is likely to change since Romney accepted the nomination and is now able to use funds he had collected for the general election.

The Wesleyan Media Project is based at Wesleyan University and tracks and analyzes political advertising spending using data from Kantar Media/CMAG.

Wesleyan also tracked the most hard-fought Senate races. The most expensive is in Missouri, where Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is trying to retain her seat against Rep. Todd Akin, disavowed by the GOP after his comments last month about rape. The candidates and outside groups have spent $13.4 million on ads in the state from June to September.

About one-third of all pro-Republican ads in congressional races are run by outside groups, according to the Wesleyan report, including Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. For Democratic candidates, about one-quarter of ads are aired by outside groups, including Majority PAC and Priorities USA.


LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



944 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 13, 2012 Thursday 9:26 PM EST


Elizabeth Warren a 'fighter' in new TV ad;
Shifting gears, the Democrat tries to contrast her candidacy with Sen. Scott Brown's with a new boxing-themed ad.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 622 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Why QE3 will matter less than you think in the 2012 election

How Paul Ryan's presence on the GOP ticket affects House races (and how it doesn't)

Is a "C" grade good enough for Obama to win?

Mitch McConnell + the Pauls = A political marriage made in heaven?

'Very enthusiastic' vs 'absolutely certain': The challenge of polling voter enthusiasm

Is Mitt Romney panicking?

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* A day after speculation swirled over a shift in Elizabeth Warren's (D) ad strategy, she released a new TV ad featuring the first trainer of boxer Mickey Ward who says, "Elizabeth Warren is a real fighter." Trainer Art Ramalho also says in the spot that Sen. Scott Brown (R) "has been siding with the big money guys." It's the first TV ad from either candidate that directly goes after the other.

* The latest CNN/ORC International poll posed the "are you better off question" to likely voters. A 42 percent plurality said they were worse off compared to four years ago, while 37 percent said they were better off, and nearly one-in-five (19 percent) said they were the same. The exact working of the question: "Would you say that you are financially better off now than you were four years ago, or are you financially worse off?"

* As he did in Las Vegas on Wednesday, President Obama opened his remarks at a campaign event in Colorado with a reference to the violence in Libya that claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. "I want people around the world to hear me," Obama said. "To all those who would do us harm: No act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values we proudly present to the world."

* Mitt Romney released a new TV ad that says, "Under Obama, we've lost over half a million manufacturing jobs. And for the first time, China is beating us." While the campaign didn't specify where the ad will run, a GOP media buyer said Romney just bought nearly $460,000 worth of air time in Ohio for the next four days.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* When asked at a briefing with reporters which districts he sees as tipping points in the race for the House majority, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) mentioned the matchup between Reps. Betty Sutton (D) and Jim Renacci (R) in Ohio's 16th District, Rep. Nan Hayworth's (R-N.Y.) race against Sean Patrick Maloney (D), Rep. Chris Gibson's (R-N.Y.) race against Julian Schreibman (D), Rep. Brian Bilbray's (R-Calif.) race against Scott Peters (D), and even possibly Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) race against Jim Graves (D).

* That didn't take long. Two days after the New Hampshire gubernatorial primaries, both the Republican and Democratic Governors Associations are up on the air in the Granite State with negative spots. The RGA ad casts Democratic nominee Maggie Hassan as a tax-raiser, while the DGA spot casts Republican nominee Ovide Lamontagne as "tea party politician attacking [Democratic] Gov. [John] Lynch."

* Our Washington, a Democratic PAC funded by the DGA and education/labor groups is up with a significant TV ad buy in the Washington governor's race hitting Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna for lobbying to increase his own salary and blocking a minimum wage increase.

* Obama will be back in Florida next Thursday, campaigning in Miami and Tampa.

* In his latest TV ad, former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine appears in a helicopter, talking energy independence and job creation.

THE FIX MIX:

Clockwork.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



945 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 13, 2012 Thursday 7:35 PM EST


Bill Clinton's defense of Obama's new welfare rules;
The former president offered a forceful defense of President Obama's new work rules for welfare recipients. But did he tell the whole story?


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1954 words


"When some Republican governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on welfare back to work, the Obama administration listened because we all know it's hard for even people with good work histories to get jobs today. So moving folks from welfare to work is a real challenge. And the administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent, and they could keep the waivers only if they did increase employment. Now did I make myself clear? The requirement was for more work, not less."

- Former President Bill Clinton, at the Democratic National Convention, Sept. 5, 2012

Readers may recall that in August we gave Four Pinocchios to Mitt Romney for a television advertisement accusing President Obama of gutting Bill Clinton's welfare overhaul - and also Three Pinocchios for the Obama administration's counterspin that Romney himself had sought a similar waiver when he was governor of Massachusetts.

What's the fuss about? Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the centerpiece of the 1996 legislation, established work requirements and time-limited benefits for recipients. But in July the Department of Health and Human Services issued a memorandum saying that it was encouraging "states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment." As part of that, the HHS secretary would consider issuing waivers to states concerning worker participation targets.

HHS's action set off a firestorm of criticism by Republicans, which was echoed in Romney's ad. 

In his high-profile speech at the Democratic convention, Clinton himself came to Obama's defense, claiming that the change in rules actually would require "more work, not less." Last week, we said we wanted to spend some time digging into this statement before making a ruling. After talking to many people on all sides of the welfare debate, we can certainly say it is a very complex issue - which makes it ripe for fact-checking.

The Facts

There are three basic rules in Washington: 1) Nothing happens by accident, 2) Personnel determines policy, and 3) No argument is ever settled. That dynamic is central to understanding the controversy surrounding the HHS memo. In this case, conservatives suspected that the administration was trying to achieve through regulatory fiat what liberals had not been able to accomplish through legislation in the past 16 years.

By many accounts, a key player in the development of the memo was Mark Greenberg, the deputy assistant secretary for policy at HHS's Administration for Children and Families, which oversees TANF. Key aspects of the memo - which was signed by Earl S. Johnson, director of the Office of Family Assistance - turn up in testimony before Congress that Greenberg gave over the years when he was outside of government, arguing for changes in the 1996 law.

On the opposite side of the long-running debate is Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation scholar who helped craft the law. (Here's an example of the two men testifying side by side before Congress, as the yin and yang of the welfare reform debate.)

As soon as the HHS memo was issued, Rector raised the clarion callthat Obama, through stealth, was gutting the law because, he says, he recognized that ideas - what he labels "loopholes" - that Democrats had been unable to slip into legislation had suddenly been offered to states in the form of waivers.

Boiled down, one key difference between the two sides is whether one should focus on job search (conservative) or job training (liberal). There was little job training in the 1996 law, which put the main focus on getting people back to work.

The HHS memo listed as possible projects for waivers such ideas as "multi-year career pathways models for TANF recipients that combine learning and work."

Another issue is whether provisions should be made for people who are disabled. Indeed, the HHS memo touts "projects that demonstrate strategies for more effectively serving individuals with disabilities, along with an alternative approach to measuring participation and outcomes for individuals with disabilities."

Critics suggest that opens the door for a whole class of people being removed from needing to find work, making it easy to boost published employment rates for others receiving assistance. In other words, if a pool of 100,000 people is reduced by 10,000, then the percentage of people finding work will increase even if the number who are employed remains the same.

We had earlier said that the HHS memo certainly appeared to be a process foul, a position recently supported by the Government Accountability Office. (The Congressional Research Service offered its own view on the Secretary's waiver authority, in a report released this week by Democrats.)

The Romney welfare ad took an extreme interpretation of the memo, claiming that Obama has already taken action to "drop work requirements." The ad further states that "under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and you wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check."

That's not apparent in the memo - at least not yet, since no waivers have been granted. But interestingly the claim made by Clinton - that the "administration agreed to give waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to increase employment by 20 percent" - is not in the memo either.

Instead, that assertion appears in a letter written by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) after Republicans erupted at HHS's issuance of the memo. She wrote:

"Specifically, governors must commit that their proposals will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work compared to the state's past performance. States must also demonstrate clear progress toward that goal no later than one year after their programs take effect. If they fail, their waiver will be rescinded."

The original HHS memo makes no mention of such requirements. Indeed, it is significantly weaker. The memo does not cite a one year time limit to demonstrate progress, for instance.

Instead, the memo suggests that states have at least several opportunities to prove that their plan works: "States that fail to meet interim targets will be required to develop improvement plans. Repeated failure to meet performance benchmarks may lead to the termination of the waiver demonstration pilot."

In an interview, administration officials said that this is an "iterative process" and Sebelius' letter represented the most up-to-date version of administration policy. Still, there seems to be some wiggle room, as there is no definition yet of "clear progress."

"The states have to show they are making progress within a year," one senior official said. "They need to identify interim targets year after year" if they are not meeting the 20 percent threshold. The original memo also said that "absent special circumstances, the length of an approved project will not exceed five years."

How many people are we talking about? The latest data (Table 46) shows that in 2010, of the 1.84 million families on welfare, 16.6 percent - or about 300,000 - left the rolls because of a new job.

Looking at the states with Republican governors that the administration said requested waivers, the numbers needed to meet the 20-percent target do not appear to be large. In Nevada, with 0.2 percent (230 families) out 11,520 families getting a job, the target for 20 percent would be an additional 46 families. In Utah, which moved 9.8 percent (735 families) of its 7,496 families to work, the number would be 147 families.

The letters from Nevada and Utah requesting a waiver - which mostly concerned relief from burdensome federal reporting requirements - were sent by the heads of welfare agencies - not by the governors, as Clinton said. The other states that the administration said sought waivers were California, Minnesota and Connecticut, which in theory would need to boost employment by 20,000, 1,573 and 202, respectively.

Some critics of the administration's approach believe it marks a return to simple "employment exit" statistics that marred the early days of state welfare reform efforts. (Under the updated version of the 1996 law, states must meet "a participation rate" in which at least 50 percent of recipients, before credits, participate in defined work activities.)

In other words, officials would tout that 15 percent of recipients had left the rolls, without acknowledging that the overall welfare population had grown by 20 percent. One former top welfare official said he could easily meet the administration's requirements by more assiduously tracking people who found jobs but did not inform the welfare agency.

Administration officials insist that will not be the case. For instance, officials said they plan to adjust the targets according to the growth of the economy, so a state could not simply meet its goal because a booming economy has made more jobs available.

The administration also says it will not rely on state-supplied data to measure progress.

"We would not use self-reported data for measuring progress under the waiver," the administration official said. "Rather, we would match data on individuals leaving TANF to reliable employment data from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH) and the unemployment system, which tracks earnings. We would do this both prospectively and retrospectively - the latter so that we get a corrected baseline that is accurate."

The Pinocchio Test

Because welfare funding for the states is delivered as a fixed block grant, there is relatively little incentive for a state to increase its welfare rolls. So even critics of the administration's approach do not imagine the changes will result in significantly more people on welfare. We stand by our earlier ruling on Romney's welfare ad. 

Still, there is enough uncertainty about how the administration will implement these waivers that it is a stretch for Clinton to declare for certain that a 20 percent threshold must be met - and to claim that more people will end up working under this new system.

The administration's emerging criteria, which has not been previously reported, certainly sounds reassuring. (Rector says not using state-reported data and relying on NDNH statistics would be "much more reliable.") But, as with everything in Washington, much will depend on how the baseline number is determined - and then how the process is monitored. In theory, a state could go five years without ever meeting the 20 percent threshold.

The administration, in fact, only revealed the 20-percent figure once it was under fire. Twenty percent sounds like a lot, but there may be less to that number than meets the eye. Given the long history of the two sides battling over the implementation of the 1996 law, critics certainly have a right to be wary about why the administration acted in the way it did.

We wavered on the number of Pinocchios in this instance. But we finally settled on two, mainly because Clinton, in his facile way, made this intense debate appear as if it is mainly a dispute about moving "folks from welfare to work." It is not quite so simple as that, and neither is it clear yet that the net result is that more people on welfare will end up working.

Two Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



946 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 13, 2012 Thursday 7:07 PM EST


Could Todd Akin's gaffe actually help the GOP in Missouri?;
How the congressman's controversial comments might actually be a net positive for the GOP in the battle for the Senate majority.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 736 words


With a single interview that aired Sunday, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) created a giant political headache for his entire party. But if he ends his Senate bid soon (a big if, considering his apparent willingness to press ahead the last couple of days), he will deliver a huge dose of political aspirin to the entire GOP. And his controversial comments might well end up as a net positive for his party's chances to reclaim the Senate majority.

When Akinsaid "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy,he not only ensured his words would dominate the news cycle, but also forced responses on a sensitive topic from Republicans across the country, the majority of whom swiftly denounced his remarks.

Akin's words are exactly not what the GOP as a whole needs right now - especially in the week before it will officially nominate Mitt Romney for president at the Tampa convention - but if the harsh intraparty response to his remarks is enough to force Akin from the Missouri race, the entire chain of events could actually boost  the GOP's chances of defeating Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in a critical contest in the larger battle for control of the upper chamber.

Akin was the candidate Democrats wanted to run against well before his remarks about rape and abortion made national news. He had a history of controversial comments, far-right political positions, and a shaky campaign that shook up its staff at the end of last year. Most Republican strategists with an eye on defeating the vulnerable McCaskill privately acknowledged that Akin would be the weakest candidate for the general election, and hoped he did not emerge as the GOP nominee.

But he did. And in the time since he won the Republican nomination to face McCaskill on Aug. 7, Akin has stoked outrage with a claim about rape and pregnancy, called for an end to federal support for the National School Lunch Program, reinforced a prior statement comparing federal student loans to stage 3 cancer, and said civil rights should be re-litigated.

For Akin, controversy is nothing new. Given more opportunities in the campaign, one could reasonably expect him to make more even more claims that either are not based in fact, are extreme, or are both.

But until his "legitimate rape" comments, Akin hadn't said anything that prompted such a swift national backlash from his own party. His one huge gaffe immediately alienated him from mainstream Republicans in a way he had never experienced.

Arguably, a big disaster now for the GOP in Missouri is preferable to a series of smaller scale rough patches heading toward November. Worse yet for the GOP, he could have made a major gaffe after Sept. 25, the point at which it would be too late for him to drop out of the race.

But now, Republicans have a chance to change course. They are applying immense pressure on Akin to get out of the race. If he does so, the GOP state central committee can choose a replacement for him.

No matter who they choose, the GOP could hardly be worse off than it is with Akin. Names mentioned as possibilities in Missouri circles include businessman John Brunner, Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Jo Ann Emerson, former state treasurer Sarah Steelman, state Auditor Tom Schweich, and former senator Jim Talent (who says he is not interested), among others.

Indeed, if Akin is replaced, some social conservatives who support him might no longer be galvanized to vote. For the GOP, that could be worth the ability to compete for the rest of the electorate. Democrats, meanwhile, could justifiably point to a mess on the Republican side and criticize the party for having to hand pick a nominee after voters selected one that fell flat. But that's a process argument. And process arguments rarely move the needle.

The glaring problem for Republicans right now is that Akin does not at all appear ready to step aside. He released an apology ad Tuesday. He said in media interviews Monday that he plans to continue campaigning. And he's not a candidate who has a history of listening to advice from the GOP establishment.

If Akin does not drop out, Republicans are left in the worst case scenario. Missouri, long considered a top pickup opportunity for the GOP, could be the race that prevents Republicans from seizing back the Senate majority.

Read more from PostPolitics

GOP eyes Tuesday deadline for Akin to withdraw

Independent voters are key. So who are they?

Obama, Romney talk to D.C. magazine about faith


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



947 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 13, 2012 Thursday 2:11 PM EST


Is Mitt Romney panicking?;
It's not been a very good week for Mitt Romney.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 888 words


This week has not been a good one for Mitt Romney.

First, his campaign pollster - the widely respected Neil Newhouse - put out a polling memo, seeking to discredit the idea of a post-convention bump for President Obama, that seemed decidedly defensive.

Then came his campaign'scontroversial comments on the Obama Administration's posture toward the Middle East, comments that Romney doubled down on during a Wednesday morning press conference even after it was revealed that the U.S. ambassador to Libya had been killed. That series of events has some within the party concerned that the race is slipping from them, or at least that their nominee is acting as though that's the case.

"They allow tactics to dictate strategy, instead of vice versa," said John Weaver, a Republican strategist. "Where is the narrative? Where is conduct representing what a President Romney would do?"

Added another Republican consultant granted anonymity to speak candidly: "I wished they'd panicked months ago; that's when I started to. Their biggest problem is the state-by-state situation in the swing states, and that situation has been clear for a really long time." (The Fix wrote aboutObama's Electoral College advantage on Wednesday morning.)

The source added that the "blooper" on Libya followed another misstep over the weekend, in which Romney's comments on "Meet the Press" suggested he would retain some elements of Obama's health care law if elected.

"How can you overturn Obamacare as your first act in office and then say that (the) parts (that test well in the polls) should be kept?" asked the source.

Even those who downplayed the significance of Romney' s statements on Libya acknowledged that the campaign is not at a high point at the moment.

"All campaigns are a roller coaster, and this one is no different," said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi. "I believe Romney is going to win."

Said another senior party strategist who remains bullish about Romney's chances: "I can't explain the Libya thing."

Romney allies insist that the second-guessing amounts to nitpicking and over-analysis.  No one outside of the professional political class and media noticed the Newhouse memo, they argue, and the takeaway from the Libya flap for your average swing voter in Ohio was that Romney was standing up for America. And, they add, there's absolutely no reason for panic since polling in swing states shows Romney within the margin of error - although typically running behind Obama.

And, as we have said before, foreign policy ain't going to decide this election. But, with media outlets making clear that Romney appeared to jump the gun on his statement Tuesday night, this episode now seems certain to dominate the narrative of the campaign for days - if not longer.

That means Romney isn't talking about the economy and Obama's handling of it. That might not be panic, but it's also not good.

Ad spending update: NBC News is out with great recap of how much money has been spent on ads in each state so far in the presidential race, and how much each group has spent.

In short, Obama's campaign has far outspent Mitt Romney's campaign so far, $222 million to $87 million. But if you factor in outside groups, Romney and the GOP have outspent Obama, $307 million to $276 million.

A look at state-by-state ad spending shows the two sides spending about the same amount of money in most swing states: Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Democrats have invested significantly more than the GOP in Ohio ($62 million to $52 million), while Republicans have spent more in North Carolina ($36 million to $22 million), Wisconsin ($8 million to $4 million), Michigan ($8 million to basically nothing) and Minnesota ($3 million to basically nothing).

For all the latest in ad spending, make sure to bookmark The Post's "Mad Money" ad tracker.

Fixbits:

A new Fox News poll shows Obama moving from a one-point deficit before the conventions to a five-point advantage today.

Support for a possible third party falls to its lowest point in eight years.

Jason Sudeikis, who has played Mitt Romney on Saturday Night Live, is staying with the show.

A new Albuquerque Journal poll shows Gov. Susana Martinez (R) with a remarkable 69 percent approval rating.

Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling shows Obama up double digits in the Land of Enchantment.

Former congressman Jay Inslee (D) outraised state Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) last month in the Washington governor's race.

Erskine Bowles endorses independent former Maine governor Angus King for Senate.

A new nonprofit is spending millions to save Blue Dog Democrats.

The Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC is up with a new ad against Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.).

Must-reads:

" Exploding the Reagan 1980 Comeback Myth" - Nate Cohn, The New Republic

"Todd Akin returns to campaign trail" - Diana Reese , Washington Post

"Keeping Up With the Kennedys" - Edith Zimmerman, New York Times

"Suburbs are the key to victory in Colorado" - Amy Gardner, Washington Post

"Challengers of voting-law changes win some battles, but outcomes still unsettled" - Robert Barnes, Washington Post

"Obama Grows More Reliant on Big-Money Contributors" - Nicholas Confessore, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



948 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 13, 2012 Thursday 8:51 AM EST


President Obama says Mitt Romney seems to have tendency to 'shoot first and aim later';
In an interview with CBS News, the president offers a harsh criticism of the GOP presidential nominee's criticism of his administration.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 678 words


Make sure to sign up to receive "Afternoon Fix" every day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

In defense of "dumb" poll questions

Are Elizabeth Warren's ads not working?

Chris Christie vs. the world (or, at least, Democratic governors)

The complicated politics of the Libya attack - and why Obama is on more solid ground

Obama rallies Democrats; retains popularity edge over Romney

President Obama's electoral college edge

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* President Obama has hit back against Mitt Romney's criticism of his administration's response to violence in Egypt and Libya, telling CBS News that Romney "seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later." Were Romney's attacks irresponsible? "I'll let the American people judge that," Obama said.

* Romney's campaign has distributed talking points to top GOP surrogates with advice about how to address questions about the GOP presidential campaign's criticism of the Obama administration's reaction to violence in Libya and Egypt. A sample question: "Did Governor Romney 'jump the gun' last night in releasing his statement?" The proposed answer? "No. It is never too soon to stand up for American values and interests."

* In a tweet, Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said "The DC Republicans pulled support from our race, but spending on pro-choice 'Republicans' in MA and ME. Is that what Republican donors want?" The Republican in Massachusetts Akin appears to be referring to is Sen. Scott Brown, who was the first Senate Republican to call for him to end his Senate bid in the wake of controversial comments about rape and pregnancy.

* The Republican Governors Association released a new TV ad hitting West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) by comparing his plan for state retirees' health care to Obama's federal health care law. The GOP ad comes two days after Tomblin released an ad saying he fought Obama on coal. Republicans spent a hefty sum trying to tie Obama to Tomblin in 2011, but it didn't work well enough to defeat him.

* Former Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine is up with a contrast spot in the Virginia Senate race that says he cut spending and balanced the budget, while former senator George Allen (R) increased spending and raised his own pay.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* The National Republican Congressional Committee has bestowed "Young Gun" status (the top tier of the committee's recruitment program) to nine new candidates, including three who recently won the GOP nomination in Arizona districts (Jonathan Paton in the 1st District, Martha McSally in the 2nd, and Vernon Parker in the 9th) and Kerry Bentivolio, the reindeer farmer and onetime underdog in the race to replace former congressman Thad McCotter in Michigan's 11th District. The other five new "Young Guns" are: Andrew Roraback in Connecticut's 5th District, Lee Anderson in Georgia's 12th District, David Joyce in Ohio's 14th District, Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma's 2nd District, and Randy Weber in Texas's 14th District.

* A WBUR poll conducted by the MassINC Polling Group shows that Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) is under 50 percent against Republican challenger Richard Tisei. Tierney, whose wife's family's legal woes have hurt his image, leads Tisei 46 percent to 34 percent.

* In his latest TV ad, Arizona Democratic Senate nominee Richard Carmona says "Republicans and Democrats both got it wrong" when it comes to health care. Running in a red state, the former surgeon general is trying keep a safe distance from his party on certain issues.

* In North Carolina Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton's (D) first general election TV ad, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee says, "I'm not slick or fancy, but I'll work hard, and I'll always shoot straight with you." In his ad, Dalton says "no more outsourcing our jobs," but Republican nominee Pat McCrorynoted that Dalton has invested in companies that outsource jobs.

THE FIX MIX:

Just watching.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



949 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 13, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


Letterman is 'grateful' for Kennedy Center Honors 'mix-up'


BYLINE: Lisa De Moraes


SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C04


LENGTH: 1068 words


David Letterman's CBS show was dark the day that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced the chosen ones for this year's Kennedy Center Honors. But the host of the late-night show released a statement Wednesday saying: "This is something wonderful for my family, my co-workers and myself. I believe recognition at this prestigious level confirms my belief that there has been a mix-up. I am still grateful to be included."

Letterman's Worldwide Pants confirms that the notoriously reclusive figure plans to show up for the fete, at which he will not have to be onstage or speak. But in keeping with the three-decades-old franchise's odd-ish format, he will sit in the mezzanine with the president of the United States and the first lady, draped in the traditional looks-good-on-no-outfit, rainbow-ribboned medal, while others pay him tribute from the stage - including, presumably, Craig Ferguson, host of the other CBS late-night show produced by Worldwide Pants.

A few months ago, Letterman was a no-show at the TV Critics Association Awards. But then, so was practically everyone, except the cast of "Homeland" and emcee Bryan Cranston of "Breaking Bad." The TCA bestowed on Letterman its Career Achievement Award.

"I wish I could be with you tonight in Los Angeles, and I would be, but those of you who are friends . . . know tonight is the night I eat glass," Letterman said in a taped acceptance speech. He instead sent a guy to the TCA Awards who looked like him to pick up his trophy.

Letterman was picked to be feted by the Kennedy Center because he - like his fellow honorees, actor Dustin Hoffman, members of the band Led Zeppelin, blues great Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova - has "contributed significantly to the cultural life of our nation and the world," said Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein.

"David Letterman is one of the most influential personalities in the history of television, entertaining an entire generation of late-night viewers with his unconventional wit and charm," Rubenstein added.

NBC's big night

The second night of the first fall season of NBC's 'The Voice" did just fine. Matthew Perry's "Go On" did fine, too. About 7 million people are interested in the controversial "The New Normal." That's all good news for the struggling network.

On Tuesday, "The Voice's" audience - 11.3 million viewers - was down about 1 million from the previous night's fall kickoff, but it was still an audience that every broadcast network would like.

That said, the show clearly is not taking the next step to "phenom" status. It might, in fact, have taken a small step back among young viewers - NBC's currency in ad sales - for the sake of becoming a player on the fall prime-time slate. Previously, "The Voice" has aired on NBC in the spring and over the summer.

Are we the only ones fighting hard to shake that nagging feeling that "The Voice," "The X Factor" and "American Idol" are all becoming the same show?

Following "The Voice," "Go On" averaged nearly 10 million viewers, retaining 85 percent of its lead-in; anything more than 80 percent is considered good. It's also a very respectable return on the 16 million who'd watched the comedy's pilot episode at about 11 one night, after NBC's broadcast of the London Summer Games.

At 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, NBC aired another episode of "The New Normal," which scored virtually the same audience size that the first episode did Monday. It appears there are 7 million people interested in this controversial Ryan Murphy comedy.

At 10 p.m., "Parenthood" returned to continue its slow slide into oblivion. This time, its season launch attracted 5.5 million viewers - its smallest opening yet.

Last season, the much-DVR'd drama launched with more than 6 million tuned in. Back in March of '10, NBC unveiled the TV-ization of the hit flick with more than 8 mill watching.

Sudeikis back to 'SNL'

"Saturday Night Live" has its Mitt Romney and its Joe Biden for election season: Jason Sudeikis will be back through January, NBC confirmed Wednesday.

And the show will have a new President Obama when it returns this weekend, with Seth MacFarlane hosting.

For the past few months, Sudeikis - who handles the roles of GOP presidential nominee Romney and Vice President Biden on the late-night show - told anyone who would listen that he wasn't sure he would be returning. The show already had lost vets Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg in recent months, along with Abby Elliott.

"SNL" launches its 38th season Saturday. The first of the show's prime-time election specials is slated for next Thursday.

NBC announced earlier this week that "SNL" would add to its cast three new Second City alums.

Meanwhile, Jay Pharoah will play President Obama during the rest of the election cycle. Pharoah inherits the role from Fred Armisen, who since 2008 has drawn the chagrin of some who thought the show should have cast a black comic as Obama.

Pharoah - an "SNL" regular since 2010 - has been working on his Obama impression over the summer and is now ready, "SNL" exec producer Lorne Michaels told the New York Times on Wednesday.

Beck back to TV

Glenn Beck has returned to TV: Dish Network announced Wednesday that it would begin carrying the conservative radio talk show host's online network, the Blaze, that very afternoon.

The satellite TV provider said it's adding the Blaze, which launched a year ago as GBTV, to boost its lineup of news and commentary channels heading toward the presidential election.

Beck's channel was scheduled to launch on Dish on Wednesday.

"After being phenomenally successful with his online streaming network, we're pleased to host Glenn Beck's return to . . . TV, especially during this exciting and important political season," Joseph Clayton, Dish chief executive and president, said Wednesday in a statement.

Beck, you'll recall, started as a regular on CNN's HLN in 2006, then migrated to Fox News Channel in '08. He left FNC in June of 2011 after losing audience and advertisers owing to his increasingly incendiary style. On his final FNC show, he told viewers: "This show has become a movement. It's not a TV show, and that's why it doesn't belong on television anymore."

The Blaze claims more than 300,000 subscribers; Englewood, Colo.-based Dish has about 14 million subscribers.

demoraesl@washpost.com

To read previous columns by Lisa de Moraes, go to washingtonpost.com/tvblog.


LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



950 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 13, 2012 Thursday
Suburban Edition


Suburbanites hold key to White House


BYLINE: Amy Gardner


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 1039 words


DATELINE: GOLDEN, COLO.


GOLDEN, Colo. - The road to victory in many of the most competitive states in this year's presidential election winds through the strip malls, traffic jams, limping economies and slumped housing markets of the suburbs.

Nowhere is the trend more pronounced than in Colorado, where two counties near Denver - Jefferson and Arapahoe - have become a central focus for both campaigns. Once reliably Republican, these suburban counties have grown more diverse and less partisan - and home to the largest concentration of the unaffiliated voters widely expected to decide the election.

The likely prize for the campaign that succeeds in reaching these voters is the entire state and, in a razor-thin national contest, perhaps even the election.

"You show me who wins Arapahoe and Jefferson counties, and I'll show you not only who wins Colorado," said Eric Sondermann, a nonpartisan political consultant in Denver, "I'll show you who's sitting in the Oval Office next January."

That thinking helps explain why President Obama will make a campaign appearance in Golden on Thursday morning, his ninth visit to Colorado this year. It explains why Republican Mitt Romney has touched down in the state a dozen times in 2012 and why one of his sons, Josh Romney, addressed a "Young Americans for Romney" gathering in Arapahoe on Wednesday night. And it explains the clutter of television and direct-mail advertising filling the living rooms and mailboxes of coveted undecided voters here.

Population growth is the single biggest reason the political dynamics of these suburbs have changed. Arapahoe County's population has doubled since 1980 to nearly 600,000; Jefferson's growth rate is not far behind. Together, they are home to nearly one-quarter of Colorado's electorate, making the state among the most suburban in the country.

Who has moved in is just as important. Educated young professionals with Latino, Indian and Chinese surnames have become commonplace on the voter rolls. Mountainside mansions coexist with more modest neighborhoods. Yoga studios and REI stores (there are five in the Denver area alone) sit alongside Home Depots and Wal-Marts and, in Golden, the sprawling headquarters of Coors Brewing.

The newcomers have brought new politics with them. Suburbs once known for their Main Street Republicans are equally populated now by a broader mix of less partisan, more pragmatic voters who prefer to think of themselves as independent. They vote on the issues they see affecting them, such as school quality and the fate of the economy. Even the pro-business Republicans in many cases lean independent, according to public polling, because of what they see as the increasingly conservative and ideological message of the Republican Party.

"When I first came here, I felt very much like I was an alien," said Ginny Lee, 50, an information technology worker and registered Democrat who moved to Golden in the 1990s from California, and whose grandparents are from China. "Part of feeling more comfortable is that I've changed, but part of that is the community changing too."

The new pragmatism explains why Romney has tried to focus exclusively on the economy in Colorado, as he has most everywhere else. His ads contend that Obama's policies have left Coloradans no better off than they were four years ago, and they blame Obama's regulatory initiatives for worsening the business climate. Romney's campaign here pushes out statistics on Colorado's real-estate market (eighth-highest foreclosure rate in the nation) and its unemployment rate (above the national average).

"The undecided voters are concerned about what's going on in the country," said James Garcia, Romney's Colorado state director. "They're concerned about the economy; they're concerned about the unemployment rate. Every single person we talk to, whether they're Republican, unaffiliated or Democrat, their concern is how they're going to put food on the table."

For Obama, who won Colorado four years ago by nearly nine percentage points, the focus has been heavily on Latinos and women. One of the quirks of the new unaffiliated voters who have moved into suburbs across the country - including in other battlegrounds such as Virginia and North Carolina - is that the men who describe themselves this way tend to vote Republican, according to polls, while the women are more likely to swing between the parties.

Just as non-ideological as their male counterparts, unaffiliated female voters are also particularly moved by issues that affect them, such as contraception and abortion. The proof came two years ago, when Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) eked out a narrow victory over Republican Ken Buck largely by targeting women in the suburbs and portraying Buck as ideologically extreme.

"We created the largest gender gap in the country," said Guy Cecil, who was Bennet's campaign manager and now runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "The suburbs of Virginia, the suburbs of Indianapolis, the suburbs of Denver - you have people who are turned off by the sort of extreme points of view that now represent most of the Republican Party."

Obama is following a similar playbook. He has focused relentlessly on the statements of his opponents - not just Romney but also his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin - supporting cuts to Planned Parenthood's funding or opposing abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. In one of his ads, a woman calls Romney "dangerous" for women's health.

The Romney campaign, too, is targeting women, featuring a woman in an ad speaking about her economic plight during the Obama years. Both campaigns are also reaching out to Latinos. And through it all, they're not ignoring their bases, with plenty of outreach happening in the conservative rural areas and Democratic cities, because the election is expected to be close. Obama has opened 54 field offices in Colorado and Romney 14.

"An election like this is good for democracy," said Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), a regular surrogate for Obama. "It tells everyone that their vote matters. Both the partisan folks, because you've got to get out your base, but also independents, because it's going to come down quite possibly to 2,000 votes."

gardnera@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 13, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



951 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 12, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Embracing Role as Surrogate, Clinton Hits Campaign Trail


BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 14


LENGTH: 956 words


MIAMI -- Bill Clinton, fresh from an appearance at the Democratic convention that confirmed his status as President Obama's No. 1 surrogate and all-around B.F.F., took to the campaign trail in this battleground state on Tuesday, declaring that ''we've got a lot of reasons to vote, and we've got a good candidate to vote for.''

Speaking to a sellout crowd of 2,300 at Florida International University, Mr. Clinton reprised much of the detail-laden defense of Mr. Obama's first term that he delivered in Charlotte, N.C. He lavished special attention on two particularly resonant issues in a state with many students and older voters: education loans and health care.

Repealing Mr. Obama's health care law, as Mitt Romney has pledged to do, would ''weaken Medicare; it's going to run out of money quicker,'' Mr. Clinton said. The Republicans, he said, would cut off the access of students to low-interest federal loans, which could put college out of reach for many middle-income people.

Mr. Clinton, speaking with a little less brio than he did in Charlotte but no less detail, offered a forceful defense of Mr. Obama's presidency, saying that nobody could have been expected to heal the damage from the recession in a single term.

''The test is not whether you think everything's hunky-dory; if that were the test, the president would vote against himself,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''The test is whether he's taking us in the right direction, and the answer to that is yes.''

Mr. Clinton's rally was the only one on a subdued day in the campaign, when the candidates and their running mates marked the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by eschewing partisan criticism. Mr. Clinton observed a moment of silence for the victims and avoided the gleeful skewering that flavored his remarks at the convention.

But he stoutly defended the idea of holding a political rally on the anniversary, saying it was ''about citizenship.'' Mentioning the federal workers who died in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, during his presidency, Mr. Clinton delivered a not-so-subtle rebuke to the antigovernment thinking of many Republicans.

''On this day, of all days, we should know there are good and noble people who work for the government,'' he said.

Mr. Clinton's speech was the first of what Obama campaign officials said would be several appearances in battleground states on Mr. Obama's behalf. Aides to Mr. Clinton say he is ready to do whatever Mr. Obama asks him -- a role that has already involved appearing at fund-raisers and in a widely shown campaign commercial.

While it was Mr. Clinton's show, it used the Obama campaign's soundtrack, from the mix tape of Bruce Springsteen and Brooks & Dunn that plays at Mr. Obama's rallies to the introductory speeches, which kept the focus squarely on Mr. Obama and used familiar campaign riffs, like rebuilding America from the middle out, not the top down. Mr. Clinton, backed by American flags, spoke at a podium with an Obama-Biden logo.

This was above all a businesslike speech. Mr. Clinton did not dwell on Mr. Obama's character. He did not refer to the appointment of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state. Nor did he offer any testimonials to the courage that Mr. Obama showed in ordering the raid on Osama bin Laden.

Instead, Mr. Clinton offered a sometimes highly detailed discussion of the economics of Medicare, and how it would be affected by the proposals of Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. He repeated his incredulous reaction that Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, had accused Mr. Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare when the Republican budget that Mr. Ryan drafted would seek the same amount in savings from the program.

Mr. Clinton pitched many of his comments at the young people in the audience, saying that a vote for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan would be a risky bet that the Republican proposals would make the country more prosperous than four more years of Mr. Obama would.

''In two and a half years, President Obama's plans produced more jobs than in the previous seven years,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''You have to decide whether you think that's an accident, and if you're willing to bet your future on it.''

Mr. Clinton drew a mixed crowd, both in age and ethnic composition, with young Latinos carrying placards that said ''Hispanics for Obama,'' while older people wore Obama ''Hope'' T-shirts that looked as if they had been through a few wash cycles. The crowd, which braved torrential rain and wind in the hours before the speech to fill the arena here, responded with frequent cries of ''Four More Years!'' and ''Fired up, ready to go.''

Lia Bustamante, 41, a Venezuelan-American and a Republican, said a relative had urged her to come to hear what Mr. Clinton had to say. Despite her party affiliation, she said she was likely to vote for Mr. Obama because, she said, ''I feel like he's more for women's rights.''

As for Mr. Clinton's value, Lisa Cornelius, 58, a teacher, said: ''The convention speech said it all. He's an iconic leader of the Democratic Party. I can't think of anybody better to promote the president's programs.''

Her daughter, Stephanie, a community college student born in 1993, the year after Mr. Clinton was elected, said: ''He had the highest approval ratings of any president. Everybody basically loved him because he played the saxophone.''

PHOTO: Bill Clinton at a campaign event at Florida International University on Tuesday, where he offered a detailed and spirited defense of President Obama's first term. ''The test is not whether you think everything's hunky-dory; if that were the test, the president would vote against himself,'' Mr. Clinton said. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/us/politics/bill-clinton-hits-trail-as-surrogate-for-obama.html


LOAD-DATE: September 20, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



952 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 12, 2012 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final


Embrac ing Role as Surrogate, Clinton Hits Campaign Trail


BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER


SECTION: Section A< PG>14; Column 0; Politics


LENGTH: 964 words


MI AMI -- Bill Clinton, fresh from an appearance at the Democratic convention that confirmed his status as President Obama's No. 1 surrogate and all-around B.F.F., took to the campaign trail in this battleground state on Tuesday, declaring tha t ''we've got a lot of reasons to vote, and we've got a good candidate to vote f or.''

Speaking to a sellout crowd of 2,300 at Florida International Universit y, Mr. Clinton reprised much of the detail-laden defense of Mr. Obama's first te rm that he delivered in Charlotte, N.C. He lavished special attention on two par ticularly resonant issues in a state with many students and older voters: educat ion loans and health care.

Repealing Mr. Obama's health care law , as Mitt Romney has pledged to do, would ''weaken Medicare; it's going to run o ut of money quicker,'' Mr. Clinton said. The Republicans, he said, would cut off the access of students to low-interest federal loans, which could put college o ut of reach for many middle-income people.

Mr. Clinton, speaking with a lit tle less brio than he did in Charlotte but no less detail, offered a forceful de fense of Mr. Obama's presidency, saying that nobody could have been expected to heal the damage from the recession in a single term.

''The test is not whet her you think everything's hunky-dory; if that were the test, the president woul d vote against himself,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''The test is whether he's taking us in the right direction, and the answer to that is yes.''

Mr. Clinton's ral ly was the only one on a subdued day in the campaign, when the candidates and th eir running mates marked the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by eschewing partisan criticism. Mr. Clinton observed a moment of silence for th e victims and avoided the gleeful skewering that flavored his remarks at the con vention.

But he stoutly defended the idea of holding a political rally on t he anniversary, saying it was ''about citizenship.'' Mentioning the federal work ers who died in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, during his presidency, Mr. Cl inton delivered a not-so-subtle rebuke to the antigovernment thinking of many Re publicans.

''On this day, of all days, we should know there are good and no ble people who work for the government,'' he said.

Mr. Clinton's speech was the first of what Obama campaign officials said would be several appearances in battleground states on Mr. Obama's behalf. Aides to Mr. Clinton say he is ready to do whatever Mr. Obama asks him -- a role that has already involved appearing at fund-raisers and in a widely shown campaign commercial.

While it was Mr . Clinton's show, it used the Obama campaign's soundtrack, from the mix tape of Bruce Springsteen and Brooks & Dunn that plays at Mr. Obama's rallies to the int roductory speeches, which kept the focus squarely on Mr. Obama and used familiar campaign riffs, like rebuilding America from the middle out, not the top down. Mr. Clinton, backed by American flags, spoke at a podium with an Obama-Biden log o.

This was above all a businesslike speech. Mr. Clinton did not dwell on M r. Obama's character. He did not refer to the appointment of his wife, Hillary R odham Clinton, as secretary of state. Nor did he offer any testimonials to the c ourage that Mr. Obama showed in ordering the raid on Osama bin Laden.

Inste ad, Mr. Clinton offered a sometimes highly detailed discussion of the economics of Medicare, and how it would be affected by the proposals of Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. He repeated his incredulous reaction that Representative Paul D. Ryan, t he Republican vice-presidential candidate, had accused Mr. Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare when the Republican budget that Mr. Ryan drafted would s eek the same amount in savings from the program.

Mr. Clinton pitched many o f his comments at the young people in the audience, saying that a vote for Mr. R omney and Mr. Ryan would be a risky bet that the Republican proposals would make the country more prosperous than four more years of Mr. Obama would.

''In two and a half years, President Obama's plans produced more jobs than in the pre vious seven years,'' Mr. Clinton said. ''You have to decide whether you think th at's an accident, and if you're willing to bet your future on it.''

Mr. Cli nton drew a mixed crowd, both in age and ethnic composition, with young Latinos carrying placards that said ''Hispanics for Obama,'' while older people wore Oba ma ''Hope'' T-shirts that looked as if they had been through a few wash cycles. The crowd, which braved torrential rain and wind in the hours before the speech to fill the arena here, responded with frequent cries of ''Four More Years!'' an d ''Fired up, ready to go.''

Lia Bustamante, 41, a Venezuelan-American and a Republican, said a relative had urged her to come to hear what Mr. Clinton had to say. Despite her party affiliation, she said she was likely to vote for Mr. Obama because, she said, ''I feel like he's more for women's rights.''

As f or Mr. Clinton's value, Lisa Cornelius, 58, a teacher, said: ''The convention sp eech said it all. He's an iconic leader of the Democratic Party. I can't think o f anybody better to promote the president's programs.''

Her daughter, Steph anie, a community college student born in 1993, the year after Mr. Clinton was e lected, said: ''He had the highest approval ratings of any president. Everybody basically loved him because he played the saxophone.''

PHOTO: Bill Clinton at a campaign event at Florida International Uni versity on Tuesday, where he offered a detailed and spirited defense of Presiden t Obama's first term. ''The test is not whether you think everything's hunky-do ry; if that were the test, the president would vote against himself,'' Mr. Clint on said. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES)


URL: http://www.nytimes. com/2012/09/12/us/politics/bill-clinton-hits-trail-as-surrogate-for-obama.html<P A>


LOAD-DATE: September 25, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



953 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Media Decoder)


September 12, 2012 Wednesday


@InvisibleObama Was Quick Twitter Thinking by Digital Ad Executive


BYLINE: STUART ELLIOTT


SECTION: BUSINESS; media


LENGTH: 726 words



HIGHLIGHT: The account was created by Ian Schafer five minutes or so after Clint Eastwood ended his speech to the Republican National Convention, with a chair as a stand-in for President Obama; it now has nearly 70,000 followers.


Everyone's asking, "who's behind @invisibleobama?" That seems like a silly question, doesn't it? #thinkabouthatone

- Invisible Obama (@InvisibleObama) August 31, 2012

A post to Twitter, on Aug. 31.

The creator of a Twitter account called Invisible Obama - born five minutes or so after the furniture-centric speech by Clint Eastwood at the Republic National Convention ended - is making himself, er, um, visible.

Invisible Obama turns out to be Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, a digital agency with a specialty in social media like Facebook and, yes, Twitter. Mr. Schafer has long had a Twitter account under his own name, @ischafer, which has more than 13,600 followers, and the agency, part of Engine USA, has one, too, , with almost 1,700 followers.

But @InvisibleObama, which began on Aug. 30, already dwarfs them both, with almost 69,700 followers; there is also a complementary presence on Facebook. And the Twitter account has been the subject of a fair amount of news coverage, on television and blogs.

The experience of shepherding the @InvisibleObama account, Mr. Schafer shared in an interview, has been a blend of practicing what you preach, the law of unintended consequences, putting your money where your mouth is and being careful what you wish for.

"It's been kind of a fascinating ride," Mr. Schafer said. "It started as a joke and became a responsibility."

The Invisible Obama Twitter feed is another example of the real-time nature of social media, which can help marketers immeasurably as they seek to capitalize on the attention that consumers pay to major news events and other aspects of popular culture.

"This is what we do," Mr. Schafer said, "try to take these moments in the zeitgeist and use them as a launching pad for relevancy."

This was not the first time he created a Twitter account to tap into, and create, consumer buzz, Mr. Schafer said.

"But this is the first one that took off immediately," he added. The takeoff was so abrupt that at one point Twitter administrators shut down the account because it "gained so many followers so quickly." (The initial blackout was resolved, Mr. Schafer said, after he contacted them.)

The tactic of taking advantage of larger events, known as borrowed interest, can be a double-edged sword. What may seem topical or witty to some could be deemed by others to be jumping on a bandwagon or childish - or, in the case of an election year idea, overly (or overtly) political.

"I was being very careful not to be too partisan," Mr. Schafer said, because he was hoping for "attention from both sides" of the political spectrum.

In fact, "I started making jokes about the Republican convention from my personal account and certain people were taking them way too seriously," he added. "This was for fun, certainly not the agency talking; I'm doing it on my own."

The idea was that "if this invisible Obama" - who, according to Mr. Eastwood, was seated in the chair he brought onstage as a prop for his speech - "had a voice, what would he be saying?" Mr. Schafer said.

"I wanted to make it more about the humor of an invisible president running around who was not just a figment of Clint Eastwood's imagination," he added, than just another way to be "critical of Mitt Romney."

Mr. Schafer said he hoped to keep the account going, "out of a passion for politics, media and social media." He has been posting each day to keep his Twitter followers interested until the presidential debates, he added, which will be "an inflection point for the account," generating many posts.

"What I'm learning is that people respond when they're consuming television news," Mr. Schafer said, demonstrating how, as is widely discussed in social media circles, consumers are increasingly using smartphones, tablets and other devices to accompany their TV watching.

"That talk about the 'second screen?' " he asked. "It's for real."

As for the red chair that serves as the avatar for the account, Mr. Schafer said, laughing, that it was "the first red chair I could find in a Google image search without a watermark."



LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



954 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(The Caucus)


September 12, 2012 Wednesday


Despite Libyan Crisis, Obama Campaign Plans to Stay on Schedule


BYLINE: JIM RUTENBERG


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 382 words



HIGHLIGHT: President Obama's aides indicated he would have reconsidered his trip had the violence in Libya and Egypt spilled into a second day in a major way, but follow-up protests were relatively modest.


LAS VEGAS - President Obama may be consumed with an international crisis, but the campaign goes on as planned, at least at this point. The president is still scheduled to start a Western campaign swing Wednesday night, with a rally here in Las Vegas and another in Colorado on Thursday.

Mr. Obama's aides indicated that he would have reconsidered his trip had the violence in Libya and Egypt spilled into a second day in a major way. But with any follow-up protests remaining relatively modest, the president will monitor events from Air Force One as he makes his way here, aides said.

Mr. Obama and his team have learned from experience that the political costs of campaigning amid crises can be minimal. It was almost exactly four years ago when Senator John McCainsuspended his campaign at the height of the financial crisis to help shape the bank bailout, and called upon then-Senator Obama to join him by postponing their first debate.

Mr. Obama declined, saying he could have input from the road, but "it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once.'' And Congressional Democrats accused Mr. McCain of engaging in a political stunt that threatened to disrupt their negotiations. The debate went on as planned.

Leaving the White House in the aftermath of a crisis may be still less politically risky in this case, given that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, injected the crisis into campaign terms by immediately criticizing the administration's handling of it. Mr. Obama has yet to directly respond to him.

His next opportunity to do so will come when he speaks here at around 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

Even as Mr. Obama's campaign was processing the developments in Benghazi, Libya, it was also moving ahead early Wednesday with the release of a new advertisementattacking Mr. Romney on taxes. Running here in Nevada, in Iowa, in Virginia and in Ohio, the ad accuses Mr. Romney of having a secret plan that would slash taxes for millionaires and raise them for the middle class.

The Romney campaign says that he has no such plans to do so and that studies that have come to similar conclusions have been based on flawed assumptions on specifics Mr. Romney has yet to give, as Annie Lowrey and David Kocieniewski of the The Times reported this week.


LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



955 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 12, 2012 Wednesday


A Sugar High?


BYLINE: CHARLES M. BLOW


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1173 words



HIGHLIGHT: Democrats are suddenly feeling good about the Obama-Romney contest. Republicans, not so much.


Democrats are riding a wave of enthusiasm. Republicans are dreading a Romney wipeout.

President Obama has experienced a post-convention bump, whereas Mitt Romney saw none. A Tuesday Gallup report showed that Obama's lead over Romney increased 5 points after the Democratic convention. That result echoed findings from a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday.

This may be in part because  Democrats bolstered their convention by huge ad spending to maximize exposure. As the Wesleyan Media Project pointed out:

During the Aug. 26 to Sept. 8 period, Obama and his allies aired 40,000 ads on broadcast and national cable television, the vast majority of which were paid for by the Obama campaign. By comparison, Romney and his allies aired 18,000 ads on broadcast and national cable television during that same time period.

There's more. New fund-raising numbers released this week found that President Obama outraised Romney in August for the first time in months.  This won't make up for the mischief I anticipate from the Republican's cash-soaked "super PACs," but it's an important turn.

And Bill "Big Dog" Clinton has hit the campaign trail in critical swing states and expanded on his devastating convention speech. Clinton is performing a critical function: attacking the faulty math of the ticket that just added a "numbers man," as Time magazine called Paul Ryan. Clinton's assault on the Republicans' arithmetic continues a well-worn political strategy and one that the Obama campaign used incredibly effectively: attack your opponent's strengths. Clinton is a master at this, smiling in your face and punching you in the gut.

Needless to say, Democrats are feeling good. Republicans, not so much.

There seems to be a sense, even among many of Romney's supporters, that he's making too many unforced errors and offering too few specifics.

A National Review editorial, "Fear Not the Bounce," noted:

The Democrats, it seems to us, made better use of their convention than the Republicans made of theirs. The Republican message, especially in the most-watched addresses, seemed less coordinated, deliberate, and focused. Republicans spent too much time explaining what a nice guy Romney is and how happy he is about female empowerment, and not enough time explaining how he would improve the national condition.

I agree with this assessment. The Republican convention was a mess. Ann Romney began her speech by saying "I want to talk to you about love," only to be followed by the brash, narcissistic Chris Christie who said that we have "become paralyzed by our desire to be loved."

Talk about whiplash. And it didn't stop there.

Clint Eastwood, in his now infamous empty-chair "speech," made a strange reference to the war in Afghanistan. Speaking to an invisible Obama, he said

I know you were against the war in Iraq, and that's O.K. But you thought the war in Afghanistan was O.K. You know, I mean - you thought that was something that was worth doing.  We didn't check with the Russians to see how they did there for the 10 years.

Of course, Eastwood was followed by Romney, who didn't even mention the war. When Fox News's Brett Baier asked him to explain this omission, Romney dug the hole deeper with a nonsensical and arguably offensive rationale:

When you give a speech you don't go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important, and I described in my speech my commitment to a strong military, unlike the president's decision to cut our military.

Huh? A would-be commander in chief doesn't think an active war is "important"?

Even worse, on Tuesday the Romney campaign jumped the gun - and skirted the truth - in a highly inappropriate attack on the Obama administration over the anti-American hostilities in Libya and Egypt. In a statement, Romney said:

I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

But, as The New York Times pointed out:

He was referring to the embassy statement condemning an American-made Web film denouncing Islam that was the catalyst for the violence. However, the embassy's statement was released in an effort to head off the violence, not after the attacks, as Mr. Romney's statement implied.

Oops.

The Romney camp should learn a lesson from journalists: wait until you have the facts. It's better to be second and right than first and wrong. Knee-jerk reactions can make you look like a jerk.

But after offending the British on his Olympics trip and labeling Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe," Mitt was already well on his way to proving that he is a diplomatic disaster.  This week the Russian president,  Vladimir Putin thanked Romney for the label, saying that it had helped Russia because it had "proven the correctness of our approach to missile defense problems."

Yeah, thanks Mitt.

But perhaps Romney's biggest mistake has been his allergy to specificity on his plans for the economy even though he's running on a promise to reform and recharge it.

As "An Open Letter to Mitt Romney," written by Peter J. Hansen for The Weekly Standard, put it:

It's one thing to identify a problem, say you care about it, and even list some steps you would take to address it.  It's another thing to convince people that you can really do the job.  Many people wonder, and not without reason, whether any president can really do this job. So what else might you do?  I suggest that your focus on the economy and jobs would be strengthened by more detailed discussions of policies you would enact, and also of related issues, notably Obamacare and Medicare.  The assertion that you are more competent than President Obama strikes many people as merely that - an assertion.  It would be supported by your speaking in more detail about a range of financial issues.

This is a major miscalculation by Romney: that somehow he can simply run out the clock without ever providing specifics (or those tax returns for that matter), and anti-Obama sentiment will magically deliver him the White House. Fear is a great political motivator, but confidence and security also play a role in presidential politics.

The Romney campaign sent out a memo on Monday to "Interested Parties"meant to assuage fears. The first paragraph began:

Don't get too worked up about the latest polling. While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly.

This sounds like one of those affirmations that you tape to your bathroom mirror and repeat every morning when your life is in the doldrums and you're in need of direction.

But self-reassurance can't compensate for self-destructiveness. Those of us who have been forced to reckon with our own mistakes know that well.



LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



956 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 12, 2012 Wednesday
First EDITION


Ad campaigns are getting political;
Companies take a risk as election heats up


BYLINE: Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY


SECTION: MONEY; Pg. 1B


LENGTH: 395 words


Folks who've had their fill of political ads for President Obama and Mitt Romney are being subjected to another onslaught of politically themed ads from consumer product giants selling something more concrete than the political promises: stuff.

There's bourbon (Maker's Mark). There's coffee (7-Eleven). There's chicken (Boston Market). And there's office services (FedEx).

But these marketers may be taking a risk by getting cozy with politics in an emotional election. "This is a tight election with massive polarization," says Daniel Howard, marketing professor at Southern Methodist University. "This is not something I'd want to associate my brand with."

How marketers are voting:

7-Eleven. For the fourth-consecutive presidential election, the chain is asking its customers to help predict the outcome. If you're an Obama supporter, you're being asked to buy coffee in blue cups. If you're a Romney supporter, it's red cups. The chain keeps a running tab on the purchases and updated results will be posted daily on a micro-site. For four elections running, 7-Eleven's "poll" results have virtually mirrored real election results.

"This program is meant to be a bright spot amidst political campaigning," CEO Joe DePinto says.

Regular cups are available for undecided customers or those who don't want to tout their vote.

Maker's Mark bourbon. What are James Carville and Mary Matalin doing in a bourbon ad instead of on Meet the Press? Shilling, of course. The political party they both support: The Cocktail Party. "Maker's Mark has always been interested in creating conversation, and we knew that this would do that," says Jason Dolenga, U.S. brand director.

Boston Market. A micro-site with a voting function allows folks to vote for turkey or chicken to determine which Market Bowl "candidate" is their favorite. Voters can get a coupon valid for a free Market Bowl with any Market Bowl purchase and a fountain drink, says Sara Bittorf, chief brand officer.

FedEx Office. In a TV spot, two local politicians agree to a clean campaign. But one candidate, whose last name is Taylor, discovers his rival has printed signs that say: "Honk if you've had an affair with Taylor."

That sign almost didn't win out in the ad, says Steve Pacheco, director of advertising.

Other signs considered for the ad: "Taylor is a cannibal," and, perhaps worst of all, "Taylor hates puppies."


LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



957 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



USA TODAY


September 12, 2012 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION


Swing-state ads bill: $575M -- so far;
Florida, Ohio, Virginia received 55% of spending


BYLINE: Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY


SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A


LENGTH: 566 words


Mitt Romney and Barack Obama pulled campaign ads from television Tuesday, in deference to the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, but that is likely to be the last day of quiet before the election.

Presidential candidates and supporting groups have already spent $575 million on political ads in 12 swing states, according to an NBC News analysis released Tuesday. More than half the money, 55%, has been spent in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Romney and allies have outspent Obama and his forces, if narrowly, in seven states. Obama and his supporters have spent more in Florida, Ohio and Colorado, and the two sides are virtually tied in Virginia and New Hampshire, according to NBC, which based the report on data from SMG/Delta, an ad-tracking firm.

Independent expenditure groups backing Romney spent heavily on his behalf leading up to the GOP convention, according to the NBC analysis, matching or outstripping the Romney campaign's spending.

Since accepting the Republican nomination, Romney is now free to spend money raised for the general election. Before the Democratic National Convention ended last week, the Romney campaign launched $4.5 million worth of ads in eight states.

Less than two months before Election Day, it's everybody into the pool. Planned Parenthood, for example, is spending $3.2 million in Ohio and Virginia for ads that show clips of Romney saying that the Supreme Court decision allowing abortion should be overturned and that he would "get rid of" Planned Parenthood.

The coming spending will show which themes campaigns are counting on to resonate with voters and the states where they believe the race is competitive, which includes Wisconsin.

Obama has maintained a lead there in opinion polls, but Romney is banking on a boost from his selection of running mate Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin native.

Romney announced he will air an ad in Wisconsin that, like other state-specific ads, hits Obama on the economy, asking voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago. The ad also promises that Romney would create 240,000 jobs in the state if elected.

Ryan will soon launch his own ads in Wisconsin -- as a candidate for his Congressional seat rather than the vice presidency. Wisconsin law allows Ryan to run for both jobs simultaneously.

The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action also has an ad in Wisconsin: It hits Romney for his tax plan, saying it would hurt middle-class voters.

Next door, Michigan is not seeing ad spending by the campaigns themselves. Outside groups have also stopped advertising. Even so, American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-affiliated group, says it is too soon to rule out the state.

"Our strategy has been to focus primarily on the core battleground states and to reassess what (state) was in play after the conventions. We're in the middle of that now, and it's far too early to take anything off the table, including Michigan," spokesman Jonathan Collegio said.

Even with the addition of Wisconsin, the list of states considered most competitive is smaller than in 2008, when 11 states accounted for 87% of presidential ad spending.

Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana and Missouri, which made that list during the contest between Obama and Sen. John McCain, aren't seeing much if any presidential advertising this year, while New Hampshire and Iowa have joined the ranks of battleground states.


LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: NEWSPAPER



Copyright 2012 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved



958 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 12, 2012 Wednesday 8:12 PM EST


Ryan hopes ads will aid House bid and Romney


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


SECTION: A section; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 479 words


Paul Ryan is the Republican nominee for vice president. But beginning Wednesday, voters in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District will see new TV advertisements from his House campaign. Ryan's campaign will spend a total of $2 million on ads in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets, his congressional campaign manager said Tuesday.

Ryan's new ads, ostensibly an effort to help his front-running House bid, could also boost the GOP presidential ticket's efforts in Wisconsin. A Republican presidential nominee has not carried the state since 1984, but polling shows a competitive race there this cycle.

_blankA Wisconsin law has allowed Ryan to remain a candidate for his seat in Congress, even as he runs for vice president. Ryan, who was first elected in the 1st District in 1998 and has never really faced a serious reelection challenge, will begin airing congressional campaign ads that will be the first in a series, his House campaign manager, Kevin Seifert, said on Tuesday.Seifert said the new ad "focuses on the critical choice before voters this November and the importance of electing leaders who are capable of advancing solutions that get America back on track." He added that Ryan is spending $1.5 million in the Milwaukee media market and will spend $500,000 more in the Madison market beginning in late October.

Ryan's Democratic opponent in the 1st District is businessman Rob Zerban, who is believed to be a definite underdog. Ryan is well known in his district and has much more money in his campaign account than Zerban has - according to campaign finance reports filed in late July, Ryan had more than 10 times as much. And a Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted for Ryan's campaign on Sunday and Monday showed the incumbent leading Zerban, 58 percent to 33 percent.

While Ryan remains popular in his district, his easy reelection wins have defied the partisan tilt there at the presidential level. President Obama narrowly won the district in 2008.

Nonetheless, it does not look as if Ryan is in a whole lot of trouble back home. But his House campaign has money to spend ($5.4 million as of late July), and as Romney tries to win Wisconsin, Ryan's ads could boost the GOP ticket's outreach efforts in the swing state. Milwaukee and Madison are two of the state's largest media markets.

Ryan's simultaneous campaigning is not unprecedented. It's happened before, as recently as 2008, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator from Delaware, appeared on the ballot in his home state as Obama's vice-presidential nominee and as a candidate for Senate. He won reelection to the upper chamber and would have been able to return there had the Democratic ticket lost the presidential election.

One key difference between Delaware and Wisconsin, however, is that the latter is a presidential swing state and the former is not.

sean.sullivan@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



959 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 12, 2012 Wednesday 5:05 PM EST


President Obama's electoral college edge;
In the rafe to 270, President Obama has the pole position.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1176 words


President Obama maintains an edge in the race for 270 electoral college votes, according to a state-by-state Fix analysis, even asnational polling suggests the race remains tight between the incumbent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Sincewe last analyzed the national map in July, and despite the fact that Romney has picked his vice president and both parties have held their nominating conventions, there's been no polling data or spending decisions compelling enough to move any state from its current rating of toss-up, lean Obama or lean Romney.

That means that Obama can count on 196 solid electoral votes and another 41 - in New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Michigan - that lean his way for a total of 237. Romney has 170 solid electoral votes and 36 - Arizona, Missouri and North Carolina - leaning his way for a total of 206.

Among the states, then, that seem unlikely to move either way over the next 55 days, Obama starts with a 31-electoral-vote edge. But it's in the eight states we rate as toss-ups where the incumbent's current advantage makes itself clearer.

Relying solely on the Real Clear Politics poll of polls in each state - the most reliable apples-to-apples comparison we know of - there are seven swing states (Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and New Hampshire) where Obama currently leads and one (Virginia) where Romney holds the lead.

Going by those polls, Obama would take 82 of a possible 95 swing-state votes and win reelection with 319 electoral votes.

Remove states where either candidate leads by a single point or less - that's Iowa (Obama + 0.2) and Virginia (Romney + 0.8) - and Obama takes 76 of the swing-state electoral votes, giving him 313 - and a second term.

Now, to be clear, where polling in these swing states stands today isn't a direct indicator of where the race will end up. Obama is the incumbent and, history shows, isn't likely to win large swaths of voters who haven't made up their minds yet. (If they're not for him now, why would they be in six weeks time?)

And, in many of the genuine toss-up states, the Obama campaign thus far has heavily outspent Romney even when spending by conservative outside groups is added into the mix. Once GOP spending begins to assert itself, there's a reasonable case to be made that many of these close states - Obama is ahead by no more than 3.4 points in any of the Fix's eight toss up-states, according to RCP - could tilt Romney's way.

As of today, however, it's clear that Obama has more paths to 270 electoral votes than Romney. If Obama starts at 237 electoral votes - and that seems to be the case, as there is scant evidence that Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Mexico are regarded as seriously in play - then he could lose all but Florida and New Hampshire among the Fix's eight swing states and still get to 270.

Win Ohio, Wisconsin (where no Republican has won since 1984) and either Nevada or Iowa, and Obama gets to 271 electoral votes. Obama could lose Virginia, Ohio and Florida and still be re-elected if he carried the other five Fix toss-up states.

We could go through electoral college scenarios all day. (Seriously.) But they almost all add up to the same thing: Obama remains in the driver's seat when it comes to winning the 270 electoral votes he needs to claim a second term.

The next 55 days are (obviously) critical, as undecided voters begin paying attention (finally), but Obama has built himself a not-insignificant electoral college cushion to ward off any momentum won by Romney.

Matchups set in Rhode Island, New Hampshire: It was primary day Tuesday in three states, and things panned out as expected.

In New Hampshire, former Senate candidate Ovide Lamontagne (R) and former state senator Maggie Hassan (D) easily won their primaries and will face off in the state's open governor's race.

In Rhode Island, Rep. David Cicilline (D) easily survived a primary challenge, taking more than 60 percent of the vote. He still faces a tough matchup in the fall, though, with former state police superintendent Brendan Doherty (R), despite Cicllline's heavily Democratic district.

Delaware was the third state holding its primary on Tuesday, but Democratic incumbents are expected to easily hold on to their seats in the state's governor, Senate and congressional matchups.

Dem super PAC goes up in 6 districts: The Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC is launching $2.2 million worth of new ads in six key House districts.

The ads will run against Reps. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), Steve King (R-Iowa), Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) and Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), and also against Rep. Mike McIntyre's (D-N.C.) opponent, state Sen. David Rouzer.

The ad against Lungren is also being sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The $2.2 million spent looks to be a good chunk of the super PAC's war chest. At the end of July, it had $4.6 million cash on hand.

Fixbits:

Anew Obama adkeeps the focus on women's rights, while another new ad running in Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio hit Romney for not revealing details of his tax plan.

Vladimir Putintakes on Romney.

A senior Israeli official says the Obama White Househas turned down a meetinglater this month with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At the Democrats' convention last week, the party reinstated platform language recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel amid controversy. And the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu has been a bit rocky.

Automated pollster Survey USA shows Obamaup by four points in Floridawhile another pollster, Gravis Marketing,shows himahead by four in Ohioanddown by five in Virginia.

Top Ron Paul aide Jesse Bentonhas left the Campaign for Liberty, a grassroots organization launched by Paul supporters.

Continuing a hot new trend, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)compares the government to Nazis.

House Speaker John Boehnersounds a pessimistic noteon avoiding the "fiscal cliff".

Former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson (R) says an aide who promoted video of Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) dancing at a gay pride eventmade a mistake. Baldwin, Thompson's opponent in an open Senate race, is trying to become the first openly gay senator.

SurveyUSA also showsa huge swing toward Sen. Bill Nelson(D) in Florida's Senate race.

The author of a study on members of Congress and their attendance at committee hearings is asking Linda McMahon's (R) Connecticut Senate campaignto stop using a quote that takes her out of context.

McMahon's opponent, Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)launches an adtargeting her business record.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)defends his commentcomparing gay Republicans to "Uncle Tom."

Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), who like Cicilline faces personal problems and a tough race in a northeastern district that should be safe,launches his first ad.

Must-reads:

"Quick Start to Program Offering Immigrants a Reprieve" - Julia Preston, New York Times

"Democrats in Congress try to put Paul Ryan back in campaign spotlight" - Paul Kane, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



960 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 12, 2012 Wednesday 12:58 AM EST


Paul Ryan to run new TV ads for House campaign;
The Republican vice presidential nominee, who is simultaneously a candidate for Congress, will run ads for the latter later this week.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 540 words


Paul Ryan (Wis.) is the Republican nominee for vice president. But beginning this week, voters in Wisconsin's 1st district will also see new TV advertisements from his House campaign. Ryan's congressional campaign manager hasconfirmed that Ryan will spend $2 million on ads in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets.

Ryan's new ads,ostensibly an effort to help hisfront-runningHouse bid, could also boost the GOPpresidentialticket's efforts in Wisconsin. A Republican presidential nominee has not carried the state since 1984, but polling shows a competitive race there this cycle.

A Wisconsin law has allowed Ryan to remain acandidatefor his seat in Congress, even as he runs for vicepresident (so the news that he is running for his House seat isn't on its own anything new).If Mitt Romney loses in November, but Ryan wins his congressional race, he can keep his seat. If Romney wins and the congressman leaves to join the newadministration, a special election would be held to replace him in the House if he is reelected there.

Ryan, who was first elected in the 1st district in 1998 and has never really faced a very serious reelection challenge, will begin airing adscongressionalcampaign manager Kevin Seifert said will be the first in a series.

Seifert said the new ad "focuses on the critical choice before voters this November and the importance of electing leaders who are capable of advancing solutions that get America back on track. This is the first in a series of ads that will be rolled out between now and November 6th by Ryan for Congress." He confirmed that the Ryan will be spending $1.5 million in the Milwaukee market, then another $500,000 in the Madison market starting in late October.

Ryan's Democratic opponent in the 1stdistrictis businessman Rob Zerban, who is believed to be asizableunderdog. Ryan is well-known in his district and has a lot more money in his campaign account. According to campaignfinancereports filed in late July, he had more than 10 times as much money as Zerban. And a Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted for Ryan's campaign on Sunday and Monday showed the incumbent leading Zerban, 58 percent to 33 percent.

While Ryan remains popular in his district, his easy reelection wins have defied the partisan tilt there at thepresidentiallevel. President Obama narrowly won the district in 2008.

Nonetheless, it does not look like Ryan is in a whole lot oftroubleback home. But his House campaign has money to spend ($5.4 million as of late July) and as Romney works to try to win Wisconsin, Ryan's new ad could boost the GOP ticket's outreach efforts in theswingstate. After all, Milwaukee and Madison are two of the state'slargestmedia markets.

Ryan's simultaneouscampaigning is notunprecedented. It's happened before, as recently as 2008, when Joe Biden, then asenatorfrom Delaware, appeared on the ballot in his home state as Obama's vicepresidentialnominee and as a candidate for Senate. He wonreelectionto the upper chamber, and would have been able to return there had the Democratic ticket lost thepresidentialelection.

One key difference betweenDelawareand Wisconsin, though, is that the latter is apresidentialswing state and the former is not.

Updated at 8:57 p.m.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



961 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 12, 2012 Wednesday
Suburban Edition


Ryan hopes ads will aid House bid and Romney


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A04


LENGTH: 477 words


Paul Ryan is the Republican nominee for vice president. But beginning Wednesday, voters in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District will see new TV advertisements from his House campaign. Ryan's campaign will spend a total of $2 million on ads in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets, his congressional campaign manager said Tuesday.

Ryan's new ads, ostensibly an effort to help his front-running House bid, could also boost the GOP presidential ticket's efforts in Wisconsin. A Republican presidential nominee has not carried the state since 1984, but polling shows a competitive race there this cycle.

_blankA Wisconsin law has allowed Ryan to remain a candidate for his seat in Congress, even as he runs for vice president. Ryan, who was first elected in the 1st District in 1998 and has never really faced a serious reelection challenge, will begin airing congressional campaign ads that will be the first in a series, his House campaign manager, Kevin Seifert, said on Tuesday.

Seifert said the new ad "focuses on the critical choice before voters this November and the importance of electing leaders who are capable of advancing solutions that get America back on track." He added that Ryan is spending $1.5 million in the Milwaukee media market and will spend $500,000 more in the Madison market beginning in late October.

Ryan's Democratic opponent in the 1st District is businessman Rob Zerban, who is believed to be a definite underdog. Ryan is well known in his district and has much more money in his campaign account than Zerban has - according to campaign finance reports filed in late July, Ryan had more than 10 times as much. And a Public Opinion Strategies poll conducted for Ryan's campaign on Sunday and Monday showed the incumbent leading Zerban, 58 percent to 33 percent.

While Ryan remains popular in his district, his easy reelection wins have defied the partisan tilt there at the presidential level. President Obama narrowly won the district in 2008.

Nonetheless, it does not look as if Ryan is in a whole lot of trouble back home. But his House campaign has money to spend ($5.4 million as of late July), and as Romney tries to win Wisconsin, Ryan's ads could boost the GOP ticket's outreach efforts in the swing state. Milwaukee and Madison are two of the state's largest media markets.

Ryan's simultaneous campaigning is not unprecedented. It's happened before, as recently as 2008, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator from Delaware, appeared on the ballot in his home state as Obama's vice-presidential nominee and as a candidate for Senate. He won reelection to the upper chamber and would have been able to return there had the Democratic ticket lost the presidential election.

One key difference between Delaware and Wisconsin, however, is that the latter is a presidential swing state and the former is not.

sean.sullivan@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



962 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 11, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Romney Camp Seeks to Head Off Post-Convention Anxieties


BYLINE: By JIM RUTENBERG and JEFF ZELENY; Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Confessore, Jeremy W. Peters and Michael Barbaro from New York, and Ashley Parker from Mansfield, Ohio.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 9


LENGTH: 1316 words


President Obama raised more money in August than Mitt Romney did, outpacing him for the first time since the spring and adding to a sense in both parties that Mr. Obama is entering the post-convention sprint to Election Day in a slightly stronger position, leaving Mr. Romney with less than two months to change that dynamic.

With some nervousness apparent among Republicans, Mr. Romney's campaign rushed out a memo on Monday stating that any post-convention polling lift for Mr. Obama was ''a sugar high'' that would not last the next few weeks, let alone to Election Day.

Even as one of the first post-convention polls by a major news organization, from CNN and ORC International, showed Mr. Obama with a slight gain, 52 to 46, over Mr. Romney, within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, the two campaigns agreed that readings right after the conventions can be ephemeral and that the race was likely to remain competitive until the end.

''There is no doubt that we come out of the conventions in better shape than we went in,'' said David Axelrod, a senior strategist for Mr. Obama. ''But as I've always said, the structure of the race is such that it was close before and it's close now.''

Neil Newhouse, Mr. Romney's pollster and the author of the memo released on Monday said, ''Voters are on a Bill Clinton sugar high that's simply not going to last -- polls taken right now probably don't reflect the reality of where this campaign actually is.''

Still, Mr. Newhouse's comments and memo reflected the sense on both sides that in what had been stubbornly static race, Mr. Obama had, indeed, established some sort of uptick in support following his convention in a way that Mr. Romney had not, though Mr. Romney's aides said he had helped himself among important segments of the population.

Mr. Newhouse said that the Republican convention had worked to improve Mr. Romney's standing, in particular among female voters.

''What we feel we got out of our convention was an improved image for the governor, and some specific attributes that people associate with him,'' Mr. Newhouse said.

The full force of Mr. Romney's first major general election advertising push, which began late last week, has yet to sink in, he added.

The state of the race may not be fully established until polling over the next week measures public sentiment about the effect of the conventions, the latest jobs report and the new onslaught of political advertising. But there is little evidence that Mr. Romney came out of the last month in a much stronger position than he went in.

Through the summer Mr. Romney's aides had expressed hope that he would begin to establish a lead over Mr. Obama through three major events: the selection of his running mate, the party convention, and the coming presidential debates. His apparent failure to gain from the first two events puts that much onus on the third, and he has been preparing intensely for the debates in recent days, keeping him away from campaigning.

The Romney campaign has always said it expects the race to be close until the end, and that it would have a chance of overcoming Mr. Obama as long as it stayed within striking distance of him in polls. That does not seem to have changed in any substantial way.

Nonetheless, there was some murmuring among Mr. Romney's supporters that his campaign had ceded too much of the campaign stage to Mr. Obama last week -- just as voters were tuning in after their summer vacations -- by deciding against advertising or campaigning very aggressively during the Democratic convention.

And Mr. Romney entered the first full week of the critical period between the conventions and the debates with a fresh round of public worry from some of his more prominent supporters.

''It is always difficult to run against a sitting president, but he does need to be clearer about what his vision is and what he would do,'' Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate leader from Mississippi -- an early Romney supporter -- said Monday. ''People are ready to vote against Obama, but Romney has not yet sold the deal. Now is the time to do that.''

While Mr. Lott said there was ''plenty of time'' for the race to unfold, he added that the back-to-back conventions, with Mr. Obama going second, allowed Democrats to ''step on our lines.''

Mr. Lott also said that Mr. Romney ''needs to say clearly, 'You elect me, this is what you're going to get.' ''

His comments were in keeping with a Wall Street Journal editorial after Mr. Romney's convention speech that questioned whether he had said enough about his policy plans, and an ''open letter'' on the Web site of The Weekly Standard on Monday in which the author suggested ''your focus on the economy and jobs would be strengthened by more detailed discussions of policies you would enact.''

Mr. Romney's aides said they released their memo Monday to keep such public expressions of concern from feeding into wider questions from within the party about the campaign's strategy and direction -- to address what one adviser jokingly called ''a disturbance in the force.''

Opening with the statement, ''Don't get too worked up about the latest polling,'' the memo noted that polls still tend to give Mr. Romney advantages on handling the economy, that he has succeeded in making inroads in the key state of Wisconsin, and that he has plenty of time to win with arguments that Mr. Obama's policies have failed.

It noted that former President Jimmy Carter held a larger lead over Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980, only to lose in the end, and that Mr. Romney had a ''real advantage'' in having raised $111.6 million in August -- its third consecutive month bringing in more than $100 million.

But Mr. Obama's higher August fund-raising figure of $114 million quickly returned the campaigns to fund-raising parity. It was the first time Mr. Obama had raised more money than his rival during a single month since Mr. Romney effectively clinched his party's nomination in April.

The combined August total of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars reflected a new reality of campaign finance for the post-Watergate era, with both candidates opting to raise money on their own, outside the federal matching system that imposes limits on spending in return for public financing.

Mr. Obama's campaign warned his supporters against complacency. ''No celebrating because they're going to have an even bigger September,'' it said in a Twitter post.

Mr. Axelrod said the new infusion of cash gave the campaign ''a little more maneuverability.'' But, he said, ''We're still mindful of the fact that we can beat Romney head to head but he has a whole air force out there that we don't have in the form of these super PACs.''

The super PACs that are helping Mr. Romney -- American Crossroads, Restore Our Future and Americans for Prosperity chief among them -- have far more money than the main one for Mr. Obama, Priorities USA Action Fund. Its fund-raising has picked up considerably, and it had its best month so far in August, taking in $10 million.

Both sides were still awaiting the effect of Mr. Romney's new ad campaign, which included 16 different commercials in nine different states criticizing Mr. Obama on jobs, the deficit, home values, small business and defense.

Mr. Romney's campaign was also planning to increase its outreach to wavering former Obama voters by highlighting his work with Democrats when he was governor of Massachusetts -- a less explored part of his background that his aides believe they can exploit. Stuart Stevens, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, said that they would portray Mr. Romney as a bridge-builder with the opposition to get things done in ways Mr. Obama did not.

Mr. Stevens noted the seesaw nature of polls and said, ''We're in the winning-the-election world. It's not a boxing match where they add up the points of all the rounds and score it.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/us/politics/romney-issues-memo-saying-obama-bounce-is-sugar-high.html


LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



963 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 11, 2012 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final


Master Campaigner Summons the Spotlight for Obama (and Himself)


BYLINE: By PETER BAKER; Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 10


LENGTH: 995 words


WASHINGTON -- Elvis is back in the building, and everyone is singing from his song sheet. Twelve years after leaving the White House, four years after his wife's failed presidential campaign and six days after his well-received convention speech, Bill Clinton is hitting the campaign trail as the role model both sides claim to emulate.

Energized by his return to the stage, Mr. Clinton has agreed to barnstorm battleground states like Florida starting Tuesday for President Obama, who has embraced the former president and appropriated his best lines. But as Mr. Clinton promotes his fellow Democrat, Republicans promote him as everything Mr. Obama is not, a ''real president,'' as Newt Gingrich put it, not a ''pretender'' like the incumbent.

Mr. Clinton's encore performance is the latest in a political drama that has played out again and again over a quarter century. The spotlight has a way of following him even when he is not in the leading role. For days, some Democrats have lamented that Mr. Clinton outshines the president he is trying to help, a conclusion Mitt Romney has encouraged. Along the way, Mr. Clinton has reinvented himself as a bipartisan figure from a mythical era of across-the-aisle cooperation.

Indeed, just a day before he hits the trail as a campaign surrogate, Mr. Clinton announced Monday that both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have agreed to address his annual philanthropic gathering, known as the Clinton Global Initiative, this month. Perhaps only Mr. Clinton could bash the other party's nominee one day and host him the next.

Mr. Clinton's campaign involvement underscores an alliance of expedience with Mr. Obama. Whatever their past tensions, Mr. Obama has concluded the race is tight enough that he needs Mr. Clinton and will swallow whatever tradeoffs come with that, including the inevitable unflattering comparisons and the off-message comments that cause temporary dustups.

David Axelrod, the president's strategist, said Mr. Clinton is a useful surrogate because the prosperity of the 1990s gives him credibility when he backs Mr. Obama's economic program. ''We will take as much of his time as he's able to give between now and November to help spread the word,'' Mr. Axelrod said.

The day of Mr. Clinton's address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., represented one of the campaign's largest online fund-raising hauls, aides said.

Mr. Clinton has agreed to campaign as often as his schedule allows, aides said, with potential trips to Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire in addition to the two-day Florida visit starting Tuesday. He has agreed to fund-raising events on the East and West Coasts in October and to appear in more campaign commercials.

''He'll do whatever the president asks him to do and be very happy to do it,'' said Joe Lockhart, his former White House press secretary and one of many longtime advisers consulted on the final edit of Mr. Clinton's convention speech.

Still, for all the energy Democrats drew from his convention speech, Mr. Clinton is hardly guaranteed to transfer his popularity to others. He made more than 100 campaign stops during the 2010 midterm elections, but could not stop Republicans from sweeping to a landmark victory in taking the House and gaining seats in the Senate.

In typical Clinton form, much of his convention speech was extemporaneous. The text fed into the teleprompter was just a little more than 3,000 words, while the version he delivered topped 5,000 words. Many of the most memorable lines were not in the text; in effect, Mr. Clinton ad-libbed back in much of the material the campaign had edited out.

The result was an address that by some measures overshadowed Mr. Obama's the next day. Republicans, eager to drive a wedge between the men, tried to fuel that assessment.

''He really did elevate the Democrat convention in a lot of ways,'' Mr. Romney said on ''Meet the Press'' on NBC, ''and frankly the contrast may not have been as attractive as Barack Obama might have preferred.''

Mr. Gingrich, who as House speaker was Mr. Clinton's main nemesis during the 1990s, said on CNN's ''State of the Union'' on Sunday that the former president's speech was ''eerily anti-Obama if you listened to the subtext,'' because in recalling his own accomplishments, he seemed to diminish the current president.

If Mr. Obama was bothered, he has not shown it. At campaign stops since the convention, he has cited Mr. Clinton. ''Somebody e-mailed me after the speech and said, 'You need to appoint him secretary of explaining stuff,' '' Mr. Obama told an audience in Portsmouth, N.H.

But the narrative around Mr. Clinton as some sort of representative of a more cooperative age seems a product of calculation and fuzzy memories. ''It wasn't exactly that way, no,'' said Robert Walker, a leading House Republican at the time. ''A lot was forced on him.''

When he did compromise with Republicans, Mr. Walker said, it was ''very reluctantly.''

Mr. Clinton's presidency was marked by titanic partisan battles. His first budget plan passed without a single Republican vote, and he was impeached for giving false testimony under oath about his affair with a former intern, Monica S. Lewinsky. Even when the two sides arrived at a mutual goal, it involved great conflict. Mr. Clinton signed a welfare overhaul bill only after vetoing the first two, and a balanced budget deal in his second term was reached only after a budget deadlock that shut the government in his first.

''The difference between the '90s and now is the bipartisan cooperation only occurred after partisan Armageddon,'' said Joel P. Johnson, a former counselor to Mr. Clinton. ''Everyone crawled out of the crater and got back together.''

Today, he said, they remain in the crater.

PHOTO: The day of former President Bill Clinton's address at the Democratic National Convention was one of the Obama campaign's best for online fund-raising, aides said. (PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/us/politics/bill-clinton-summons-the-spotlight-for-obama-and-himself.html


LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



964 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 11, 2012 Tuesday


Sept. 10: Will Obama's Bounce Hold?


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 1290 words



HIGHLIGHT: The expectation of the model is that President Obama's bounce will decline some over the course of the next week and a half. If he holds his full bounce in the polls, it will be an encouraging sign for him.


Has President Obama's convention bounce reached its peak? On Monday, his position declined slightly in our forecast for the first time since Aug. 27.

To be sure, Mr. Obama had a fairly strong day of polling on Monday relative to the long-term baseline. But the data was a little bit more equivocal than in polls released over the weekend -- which may suggest, at least, that he will make few further gains in the polls.

Mr. Obama's gained a single point in the Rasmussen Reports and Ipsos tracking polls on Monday, but held steady in two others from Gallup and the RAND Corporation. (His lead also declined in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll on Tuesday, which was published after our forecast was updated late Monday night.)

Some of the surveys apart from the tracking polls were erratic and not necessarily so strong for Mr. Obama. He actually declined by several points in one national poll, conducted by TIPP, although a considerable amount of their data was from early last week and did not reflect the key convention speeches.

National polls out on Monday from CNN and ABC News/Washington Post told somewhat contradictory stories.

In the CNN survey, Mr. Obama moved into a six-point lead among likely voters (and an eight-point lead when the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson was included in the poll) -- up from a tie previously. But he made fewer gains in the survey among the broader universe of registered voters, with whom his lead expanded to eight points from seven.

In the ABC News/Washington Post poll, just the opposite happened. Mr. Obama made substantial gains in that poll among registered voters, going from a one-point deficit to a six-point lead. But the ABC News/Washington Post poll has started to report likely-voter results, and this is where Mr. Obama's gains were not all that substantial, going from a two-point deficit in its August poll to a one-point lead now.

The state polls were also somewhat mixed for Mr. Obama. He received one of his worst polling results of the year in a North Carolina survey conducted by SurveyUSA for the Civitas Institute, which put him 10 points behind Mitt Romney. There are a few things to be mindful of in this poll: most of its data preceded Mr. Obama's acceptance speech last Thursday, and the poll somewhat implausibly showed 30 percent of its African-American respondents voting for Mr. Romney.

Nevertheless, it's one reminder that candidates probably do not get much, if any, benefit from holding a convention in a swing state; Mr. Romney, for his part, got some middling data in Florida in polling conducted last week.

A better state-level result for Mr. Obama came from an Ohio poll from Gravis Marketing, which put him four points ahead there, reversing a one-point deficit in a poll conducted after the Republican convention. Furthermore, Gravis has had substantial Republican lean in the other polls it has released this year, making these results look stronger for Mr. Obama by comparison.

For the most part, however, Mr. Obama's stronger state polls on Monday were from places like Minnesota and Washington State that are not as relevant to the Electoral College. We're lacking data so far on what, if any, effect the Democratic convention has had on Virginia, Florida, Colorado and other important swing states.

Given that the forecast model was quite aggressive about pricing in Mr. Obama's convention bounce, we're also going to be monitoring carefully for any signs of its decline.

The expectation of the model is that Mr. Obama's bounce decline some, by a percentage point or two, over the course of the next week and a half. If he holds his full bounce in the polls, it will be an encouraging sign for him.

What makes matters a bit more confusing is that we're still seeing some polls trickle in that were conducted partly or wholly before the major speeches at the Democratic convention. In those surveys, just the opposite is true: it counts as a disappointment if Mr. Obama's numbers fail to improve, as interviews that predate the convention are replaced with newer ones.

This is one time when it's important to carefully check the field dates associated with a poll. It seems pretty clear that the number of polls is likely to proliferate this week, including polls from survey firms that have not been very active before. Although they are often fine polls, some surveys from newspapers and academic institutions have a longer lag time before they report their results.

But at the very least, it appears as though Mr. Obama is not on track for the large bounce in the polls that seemed possible over the weekend, when Mr. Obama's numbers were improving at a prodigious rate in the wake of former President Bill Clinton's speech.

Mr. Obama almost certainly had the more successful convention than Mr. Romney. But in some sense, his bounce has been fairly ordinary; conventions typically do produce bounces.

It was the very small bounce that Mr. Romney received in the polls after his convention -- about two points -- that is more unusual historically, and somewhat low even relative to reasonably diminished expectations.

When incumbents receive a bounce in the polls after the conventions, it can potentially be more persistent. In each year between 1988 and 2004, there was little immediate sign of decline in the incumbent party's numbers after its convention, with its results holding in about the same place for up to five weeks.

The reason may simply be that the incumbent party holds its convention last -- and so there is less to interrupt its message.

I suspect that in future years, we may see the challenging party avoid scheduling its convention so close to the incumbent's, as it that provides it with very little time to build a sense of momentum.

Moreover, polls conducted after both conventions will reflect voters having had a chance to hear both sides of the story. It's not good for Mr. Romney that voters just became much more informed about the election, and the numbers have shifted toward Mr. Obama.

Still, there have also been years, like 2008, when the incumbent party's bounce faded quickly. There have also been years in which the incumbent had a long, gentle fade in the polls between the convention and the election itself. The more advantage an incumbent builds after his convention, the more he'll be able to tolerate shedding a few points in the polls later.

In 2004, George W. Bush built about a five-point lead after his convention, and lost three points of that by Election Day -- still enough to give him a two-point win over John Kerry.

Four years earlier in 2000, Al Gore had built up just a slightly smaller lead -- four points over Mr. Bush -- but it wasn't quite enough for him to win the Electoral College.

The unusually low volatility in the polls this year also makes Mr. Obama's bounce more difficult to analyze. Since the numbers have been very hard to move, does that imply that when a candidate does see a shift, his numbers are more likely to remain intact and establish a new normal?

Conversely, is the gravity in the race so strong that we're sure to see Mr. Obama's numbers revert to the long-term mean, with about a two-point lead over Mr. Romney, before very long?

Ultimately, the best reason for Mr. Romney's backers to be pessimistic about his chances may be that the normal wasn't that great for him. With a two-point deficit in the polls, Mr. Romney could win the election in any number of ways, but he would nevertheless be an underdog, and especially so on the premise that voters were extremely resistant to changing their minds for any reason.

Still, Mr. Romney needs to take care of first things first, and seeing some steam come out of Mr. Obama's numbers would be his first step on the road to recovery.


LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



965 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 11, 2012 Tuesday 8:12 PM EST


Joshua Freed


SECTION: A section; Pg. A14


LENGTH: 165 words


JOSHUA FREED

Clean Energy Program, Third Way

It's still too early to get the final results [of President Obama's energy vision], but it has actually proven more successful than some headlines would have you believe. The federal government provides investment capital for innovators [to help them overcome] something called the "Valley of Death" [the start-up period when] companies and innovators find it hard to get capital from the private markets at an affordable rate.

I don't want to speak or predict what the Romney administration will do. They haven't been clear on that yet. But when you look at the energy plan that's been proposed and you look at what Republicans on the Hill have said, when it gets to any investment in technologies that are going to be applied to potentially commercial investments, commercial products, they are suggesting that they want to eliminate investment, that anything beyond basic research is the domain of the private sector and only the private sector.


LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



966 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 11, 2012 Tuesday 3:24 PM EST


Mitt Romney and the 'captain of the ship' question;
What Mitt Romney and Jack Sparrow have in common.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 640 words


Mitt Romney's hopes of a win this November rely on convincing a majority of voters of one simple idea: That he is uniquely suited to steer the ship of state during these trying economic times.

He's not there yet, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which asked registered voters "on a ship in a storm, who would you rather have as the captain?"

Forty-six percent of registered voters named Obama as their preferred captain, while 43 percent chose Romney. Among electorally critical independents, it was even closer on the "captain" question, with Romney taking 44 percent to 43 percent for Obama.

Why is the captain question so important to Romney? Because onvirtually every other character attribute question, he is being swamped by Obama.

Who do you think would make a more loyal friend? Fifty percent of registered voters named Obama, while just 36 percent chose Romney. Fifty-two percent said they'd rather invite Obama to a dinner at their house, while just 33 percent chose Romney. Ditto who you'd rather have take care of you when you were sick: 49 percent chose Obama, while 36 opted for Romney.

Dismiss these sorts of poll questions if you want, but they speak to the broader perceptions that people have of the two men running for president. And perception/feel/heart has far more influence in determining how someone votes than do policies/head. Obama is the caring, friendly one. Romney has to be - repeat, HAS TO BE - the competent, trustworthy one.

To win, Romney has to have voters think to themselves two things. 1. "I like Obama more but I don't think he has what it takes to get the country out of this economic mess." 2. "Romney may not be a guy I want to hang out with but he knows that he's doing."

When (or if) you get on a ship or a plane, you don't much care about what a great guy or gal the captain is. You care far more about his or her ability to dock the ship/land the plane.

That's the dynamic Romney needs in order to win in eight weeks times. And the Post-ABC numbers suggest he's yet to grab the tiller - badmetaphoralert! - on the "captain" question just yet.

Crossroads GPS launching new Senate ads: The GOP outside group Crossroads GPS is set to announce the launch of $2.6 million worth of new ads in three top Senate races: Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

In total, five spots will run in three states - threeofthem in Virginia - hitting Democratic candidates on a range of issues. The Ohio ad features a football theme, while the Nevada ad hits Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) on Medicare.

The ads will start tomorrow and air for one week.

Crossroads GPS is the issue advocacy arm of the American Crossroads super PAC.

Fixbits:

Paul Ryanreturns to the Capitolfor Thursday's votes.

Ryan praises Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for his stance against the city's teachers union strike, putting Obama on the spot.

Anew national pollfrom Business Investors Daily and the Christian Science Monitor shows no convention bounce for Obama, in contrast to other polling.

Todd Akin: Still not dropping out.

A new poll in Massachusetts shows Elizabeth Warren (D) closing to within one point of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) has landed the backing of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), burnishing his bipartisan and foreign policy credentials in his matchup this November with fellow Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman. The two Democrats both made the general election under California's new top-two open primary system.

Must-reads:

"The Ghost of George W. Bush" - Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast

"Nominees Leave Congressional Candidates to Stump Alone" - Helene Cooper and Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times

"Mitt Romney tries at once to appeal to moderates and to rally conservatives" - Philip Rucker, Washington Post


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



967 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 11, 2012 Tuesday
Suburban Edition


Joshua Freed


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A14


LENGTH: 165 words


JOSHUA FREED

Clean Energy Program, Third Way

It's still too early to get the final results [of President Obama's energy vision], but it has actually proven more successful than some headlines would have you believe. The federal government provides investment capital for innovators [to help them overcome] something called the "Valley of Death" [the start-up period when] companies and innovators find it hard to get capital from the private markets at an affordable rate.

I don't want to speak or predict what the Romney administration will do. They haven't been clear on that yet. But when you look at the energy plan that's been proposed and you look at what Republicans on the Hill have said, when it gets to any investment in technologies that are going to be applied to potentially commercial investments, commercial products, they are suggesting that they want to eliminate investment, that anything beyond basic research is the domain of the private sector and only the private sector.


LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



968 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Opinionator)


September 10, 2012 Monday


D'Souza Responds


BYLINE: STANLEY FISH


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1840 words



HIGHLIGHT: Reader comments about a new documentary by Dinesh D'Souza are relayed to the filmmaker, who replies.


S.F.: How's the movie doing?

D.D.: Today the film surpassed Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and this week it will surpass both Moore's "Sicko" and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

S.F.: Congratulations! Many readers asked, "Who funded the movie?" Behind the question is a suspicion that it was bankrolled by right-wing money men, and that therefore it was a bought-and-paid-for campaign ad from the very beginning.

D.D.: The movie was funded by 25 individuals. It is true that none of them, to my knowledge, is an Obama fan, but none of them, not a single one, tried to dictate to me what should be in the film or even reviewed the film before it was released. So the film is not a production of the Republican Party or of the Romney campaign or of the talismanic figures like Karl Rove who are involved in the PACs. I am pleased to say that I will be able to give the investors their money back.

S.F.: Some readers characterized the King's College, of which you are the president, as "barely above correspondence level," a place where little science except creationist science is taught, a venue for the promotion of Christian doctrine rather than a genuine liberal arts college devoted to open inquiry. How would you characterize the college? Are you a creationist and do you believe, as one reader assumed you do, that the earth is 6,000 years old?

D.D.: I am not a creationist as the term is usually understood. I believe that the earth is billions of years old and the universe even older. I do believe that God is the creator, but that's a completely different thing. I've written in defense of evolution and made arguments that are based on evolution. As for the King's College, it is a quite selective liberal arts college. The SAT scores of our students are comparable to N.Y.U.'s and Georgetown's and our students have routinely been admitted to those colleges. We don't teach creationism and we don't teach Christian doctrine. We do teach the New Testament and the Old Testament, but in a scholarly way. Our programs are politics, economics, business, philosophy, media, culture and the arts. We teach the history of science but we don't teach laboratory science, in part because the economics are prohibitive and in part because our mission is to shape young people to go into certain institutions - law, media, journalism, finance, politics. Our students are not being prepared to enter seminaries, but to go to Goldman Sachs and Capitol Hill and Shanghai, where, from a liberal point of view, they will be even more dangerous.

S.F.: Some posters were dismissive of the idea of "American exceptionalism." They wondered what the phrase meant and suspected that it was a rhetorical device enabling the United States to justify actions it would condemn if they were performed by other nations. What, in your view, is so exceptional about America?

D.D.: My definition of American exceptionalism is one of identifying the ways in which America is unique in the world. First of all, America is unique in being a country founded, in a sense, by a group of people sitting around a table. Other countries have been founded by "accidents of force." America is a creation of thought. A second aspect of American exceptionalism is that while in other countries citizenship is a function of birth and blood, you become an American by assimilating to a certain way of life, a certain aspiration. And third, America has been a kinder, gentler superpower than traditional empires have been. What does the doctrine of American exceptionalism empower the United States to do? Nothing more than to act better than traditional empires - committed to looting and conquest - have done. So that's American exceptionalism, an exceptionalism based on noble ideas, ideas that it holds itself to even when it falls short of them.

S.F.: You say in an e-mail to me that you don't think Obama is anti-American. You just think he wants to "downsize" America, take her down a notch. Isn't that a distinction without a difference? You pose a choice between America's dream and Obama's dream; the subtitle of your new book is "Unmaking the American Dream"; you say that the most dangerous man in America lives in the White House, and that those who vote for Obama will be "voting for their own decline and impoverishment." Aren't you labeling him anti-American at least in the sense that he desires America's demise as a super-power?

D.D.: O.K., if the desire to knock America off its pedestal, to redistribute American income to other countries, to shrink America's footprint in the world, makes you anti-American, then Obama is in fact anti-American[[anti? You changed it elsewhere]]. I don't use that label for Obama because he thinks it would be good for America to play a smaller role economically, politically, culturally and so on. Most everyone else agrees that America should be prosperous, should be strong, should be a force for liberty, should be No. 1 as long as possible. All I'm saying is that Obama stands outside that consensus. So he might be very happy if the world was dominated not by one, but by six countries. He'd be very happy if America, which has 5 percent of the world's oil, but uses 25 percent, instead used 10 percent, allowing developing countries to use more. These are not inherently evil or un-American ideas - so the slogan of anti-Americanism is not helpful; but they are ideas and an ideology most Americans don't agree with.

S.F.: The vast majority of readers objected to your main thesis - that Obama's views are best explained by the anti-colonialist ideology of his father. Some readers scoffed at what they call pop-psychologizing and find your analysis implausible given that Obama spent so little time with his father. Others deemed the analysis unnecessary as an explanation of Obama's policies, which are, they say, exactly what one would expect from a mainstream, slightly left-of-center Midwestern pragmatist, many of whose ideas are taken from the moderate Republicans no longer welcome in the party.

D.D.: Well, let's take that second argument first. We have seen in America, within four years, a complete redefinition of the relationship of the citizen to the state. The federal government has made incursions into a whole series of industries that were previously in the private domain. Bill Clinton's doctrine - that the era of big government is over - has been completely repudiated. So the federal government now has a very active hand in medicine, in hospitals, in insurance, in banking, in finance, in automobiles, in energy. I'm not saying that government has had no role in these institutions before, but the degree of involvement has changed substantively. As for Obama and his father, in the film we interview psychologist Paul Vitz, who identifies two models of paternal influence, the inner city model - my dad abandoned me, he's a jerk, I want nothing to do with him - and the World War II model - my father's away, but he's a hero, a great man fighting for his country and I wish I could be worthy of him. Obama ultimately takes neither of these two models. Instead, he takes a middle route and divides his father into the good father and the bad father. He says, I will not try to be like my father as a man, but I do want to take my father's dreams. That is the meaning of his book's title: "Dreams From My Father." What I'm doing is not pop-psychologizing, unless you want to call Obama a pop-psychologist of himself. I'm just taking Obama's cue that his father had a decisive, shaping influence on him, and saying let's take the dreams of the father and look at the actions of the son and see if the jigsaw fits.

S.F.: Not a few readers turned the psychological lens on you. They argued that as a dark-skinned immigrant, you are over-compensating and cozying up to the white elite as your ancestors did in India. "Leave it to the 'intellectual' and dark-skinned immigrant to do the dirty work for the racist faction of the conservatosphere. Can you imagine this documentary having as much power if it came from a white guy?"

D.D.: Well, first of all, this documentary would not have had the same power if it came from a white guy, not because my skin is brown, but because I grew up in the third world; my credibility comes from the fact that Obama and I are both global guys. Now it is true that my brown skin diffuses the race card, and I'm glad it does, not because I'm a pawn of the racists but because I don't think that Obama is motivated by race and I don't think the critique of Obama is motivated by race either. As for the charge that I am carrying water for the white elite, all I can say is that I grew up in a middle class, English-speaking family in India, and I embraced conservative ideas at Dartmouth because I realized that they were very similar to the values with which I was raised, values most Indians, most immigrants, hold - a belief in individual merit and the idea of a society which has social mobility; you can move from the bottom to the top.

S.F.: Many found the title of your book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage," puzzling. They ask, what rage? Isn't he no-drama Obama, determinedly cool and more than a little withdrawn?

D.D.: I think Obama is cool when he's talking about things he doesn't care about, like the inner city, the poor, hate crimes, race. When he talks about such matters, it often seems that he is reading from his tax return and then people think, "Oh, he's so professorial." But when he talks about banks, the insurance companies, the guys who fly corporate jets, his voice raises up a notch and his lip curls and he gets a little mean. So I think he does have rage, but it is sublimated rage. His is not the rage Clint Eastwood displays when he says "Make my day." It is more like the rage Charles Bronson displayed in the "Death Wish" movies. He was inwardly furious; he would respond, but he would never fulminate. Obama's father showed Clint Eastwood rage. Obama's rage is there, but, as I said, it's sublimated.

S.F.: Finally a question more for me than you. I was chastised repeatedly for having you as a friend, for breaking bread with you (as I am about to do again), and for giving your "crackpot" arguments the time of day. One reader hoped that my criticism of the movie (which he thought too mild) might end a friendship that brought discredit to me. The idea is that you should choose your friends or spouses or partner by applying a political litmus test. Have the right (in this case, left) views and you can be my friend. It doesn't work that way in the world - witness Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, James Carville and Mary Matalin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia - and, if I can borrow from one of my own titles, it's a good thing, too. Let's eat.



LOAD-DATE: September 11, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



969 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(Campaign Stops)


September 10, 2012 Monday


The Unexpected Impact of Coded Appeals


BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER FEDERICO, HOWARD LAVINE AND CHRISTOPHER JOHNSTON


SECTION: OPINION


LENGTH: 1558 words



HIGHLIGHT: College-educated whites are simultaneously more racially tolerant and more likely to express the racial resentment that they do feel politically.


After signing into law the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously told an aide, "we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." Indeed, the Johnson-Goldwater contest was notable in two important respects related to race: it featured the first appearance in almost a century of racial animus as a central dimension of partisan conflict in a presidential election, and it was the last time a Democrat received a majority of the white vote.

Attention to matters of race has surged in recent weeks with the appearance of a pair of purportedly race-coded ads. One, paid for by the Republican National Committee, alleges that President Obama intends to weaken the work requirements provision in the 1996 welfare reform law, and another, paid for by Romney for President, states that "the money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that is not for you."

Many commentators have argued that with these ads, Romney and the Republicans are "playing on the racial resentments of the white working class the same way Reagan did," as John Judis recently put it. More generally, Peter Beinart and others have argued that Romney may be pursuing a "bubba strategy" aimed at courting working-class whites - or more specifically, non-college-educated whites - through their cultural conservatism.

It is not news that whites without college educations have become a notably Republican constituency in recent years. Data collected in April by the Pew Research Center bears this out. White voters with college degrees split relatively evenly in their partisanship, but those without college degrees clearly lean Republican, with 54 percent  identifying as Republicans and only 37 percent  identifying as Democrats. Eight years ago, the gap was smaller, and educated and uneducated whites alike identified more with the Republicans than the Democrats by about nine percentage points.

The growing Republican tilt of this group has drawn the attention of political analysts to how central the white working class is to the party's strategy and advertising. The assumption here is that less educated  whites are especially likely to be motivated by appeals that touch on matters of racial or cultural conflict, as in the race-coded ads about welfare and health care. While this assumption may accord with popular stereotypes about non-college-educated whites (recall Obama's comment at a 2008 fund-raiser in San Francisco about small town people clinging to "guns and religion" and anti-immigrant sentiment), it overlooks recent research by political scientists that suggests that racial and cultural anxieties actually have their greatest political influence on better-educated whites.

To begin with, the political preferences of college-educated whites are often more racialized than those of whites who did not go to college. According to research we have done using surveys of thousands of American adults, this is the case for attitudes toward the issue at the heart of the Romney campaign's recent ad blitz, welfare. Although it is true that whites without college degrees are more likely to view African Americans as "lazy" or to express racial resentment, analyses of data from nationally-representative surveys indicate that whites who hold negative racial beliefs are twice as likely to oppose welfare if they have college degrees than if they do not. Put another way, given two white people, one who went to college and one who didn't, the former is more likely to express his racial hostility in the form of greater opposition to welfare.

We found similar patterns in experiments that looked at whether whites engage in racial "double standards" in evaluating welfare recipients. For example, in one of our studies, whites responded to a question asking how angry they would be at an individual who "collects welfare because he is too lazy to get a job." For one half of the participants, the welfare recipient was merely described as a "man." For the other half, the recipient was described as a "black man." Not surprisingly, white participants who perceive blacks as lazy were more likely to express anger toward the welfare recipient when he was described as a "black man" rather than a "man." Interestingly, though, this pattern was found only among . Among non-college-educated  whites, stereotypes were essentially unrelated to anger toward the welfare recipient - regardless of whether the recipient was described as a "man" or a "black man."

Research on opinions about other policy issues corroborates this finding. Health care - an issue that is increasingly linked to racial attitudes due to its association with President Obama - provides an example. Analyzing data from the 2008 American National Election Study, we found no relationship between negative feelings toward African-Americans and opposition to government-provided health care among whites without  college degrees. For college-educated whites, however, negative racial feelings were strongly associated with increased opposition to such reform. As the graph below shows, for whites without college degrees, feelings toward African-Americans are unrelated to whether respondents support or oppose government-provided health care. For college-educated whites, however, increases in negative feelings are associated with large increases in opposition to government-provided health care.

But what about the supposed influence of a broader cultural conservatism - as opposed to one specifically focused on race -among non-college-educated  whites? Here, research also confounds the presumption that less-educated, working-class whites are disproportionately driven to support the Republican Party because they hold conservative views on social issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control. For example, an analysis of data from 20 years of national surveys (from 1984 to 2004) by the political scientist Larry Bartels reveals that whites with conservative attitudes toward social issues like abortion are actually likely to support Republican presidential candidates if they have college degrees than if they do not.

So why is racial animus more politicized among well-educated whites? The simple answer is that education imparts social and political knowledge that prepares people to better read the signals provided by political leaders and the mass media. In recent decades, these signals have subtly linked welfare and other government social programs with stereotypes of African-Americans. In some cases, these signals have come in the form of "coded" political rhetoric, like President Reagan's famous story of the Cadillac-driving Chicago welfare queen. In other cases, they come from media coverage that over-represents the percentage of the poor who are African-American.

Given that educated whites are more likely to pay attention to social and political affairs, it is not surprising that they pick up these signals and build them into their beliefs more thoroughly than non-college-educated whites do. What's more, this effect is not merely due to the fact that educated whites are wealthier and thus more afraid of losing what they have to those they consider the "undeserving" in the form of higher taxes. The effect of education holds up even after statistical techniques are used to account for the fact that college-educated whites also have higher incomes.

In sum, the racially tinged ads now running in Ohio, Colorado and other battleground states may succeed in influencing racially resentful white voters, but if so, the people they influence are more likely to be educated than not. Consequently, this is less likely to translate into more Republican votes, for two reasons. First, on average, educated whites are more racially tolerant than non-college-educated whites. Since racial tolerance diminishes support for candidates who appear to make racial appeals, politicizing the racial attitudes of these voters is unlikely to be an effective strategy. Second, educated voters hold stronger partisan attachments than less educated voters. By the time they see campaign advertisements, they are more likely to have made up their minds about which candidate to support, and they will not be easily budged.

None of our comments are intended to dismiss the political importance of issues like welfare; nor do they imply that all concerns about the scope of the welfare state are a subterfuge for racism. Indeed, difficult questions about the role the government should play in redistributing wealth and protecting the poor have historically been the main focus of ideological conflict between the political parties. However, as political scientists Michael Tesler and David Sears have argued in their book "Obama's Race," basic questions about the size and scope of government have inevitably been tainted by white Americans' feelings and beliefs about African-Americans. We can only hope that important philosophical and practical concerns about the benefits and costs of government intervention - rather than racial stereotypes - will determine whether voters opt for more or less spending on welfare, health care and other safety-net programs.



LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



970 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 10, 2012 Monday 9:37 PM EST


Post-convention poll shows Obama holds slight lead over Romney;
A post-Democratic Convention CNN/ORC International poll shows the president has opened up a single-digit lead over Romney.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 630 words


Make sure to sign up to receiveAfternoon Fixevery day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

The politics of race and religion in two pie charts

Bill Clinton, Democratic National Convention star

Why is Obama looking so strong in Ohio?

Connecticut Senate race moves to lean Democratic

So Joe Biden says to a biker

Why the Chicago teachers strike is bad news for President Obama

Welcome to the beginning of the end of the 2012 campaign

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* A new CNN/ORC International poll of likely voters shows President Obama holds a slight lead over Mitt Romney. Obama leads 52 percent to 46 percent, a bump up for the president from the previous survey conductedjustbefore the Democratic convention, which showed the race tied at 48 percent. The poll also shows Romney leading Obama by 14 points among independents. The latest poll was conducted during the three days following the end of the Charlotteconvention.

* A poll conducted for Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) opponent shows that he is running about even with the congresswoman. Democrat Jim Graves trails Bachmann by just a48 percent to 46 percent margin in the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey, which shows amajorityofindependentsprefer the Democrat.

* Wendy Rosen, the Democratic nominee against Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) pulled out of the race on the same day the Maryland Democratic Party alleged that she voted in bothMarylandandFloridain 2006 and 2008. Local Democratic officials will select a replacement for Rosen.

* Thepitchesintended to encourage people to donatemoney to Romney's campaign via web, text, and email were (until today) nearlyidenticalcopies of the wording used by the Obamacampaigntosolicitdonations.

*The battle for the House is on, with Republicans reporting more than $4 million worth of independent expenditures across 22 districts over the weekend. The National Republican Congressional Committee is investing big (a combined $2 million) in conservative-leaning districts held by Democratic Reps. Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Mark Critz (Pa.), Jim Matheson (Utah) and John Barrow (Ga.). These are the four districts where the NRCC has spent the most so far, and overall, it is playing more offense than defense at this early stage.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* The National Republican Senatorial Committee is hitting the airwaves in Maine this week with a $500,000 ad buy.IndependentformergovernorAngus King is the clearfrontrunnerin the three-way race that also includes Democrat Cynthia Dill and Republican Charlie Summers. The NRSC's foray suggests Republicans believe there is a path tovictoryfor Summers.

* West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) is up with his first TV ads, including one spot thatcontinueshis strategy of putting distance between himself and Obama. "Since the day I became governor, I fought the Obama administration's war on coal," Tomblin says in one of the spots.

* Republican vicepresidentialnominee Paul Ryan will be back in Washington this week for a vote on acontinuingresolution that would keep thegovernmentfunded until next March.House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he expects that Ryan will vote for the measure, which contains spending levels higher than the ones Ryanproposedin his budget plan.

* Singer Nicki Minaj has provided a little more clarity: She did not actually endorse Romney in the presidential campaign. In an interview, Obama suggested that Minaj might not actually have been endorsing theRepublican, and she confirmed as much."Thank you for understanding my creative humor & sarcasm Mr. President, the smart ones always do..." tweeted Minaj.

THE FIX MIX:

Zing!

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



971 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 10, 2012 Monday 9:06 PM EST


Bill Clinton, Democratic National Convention star;
A new Pew poll shows that the former president's star shined the brightest at last week's convention in Charlotte.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 328 words


Bill Clinton's speech was the highlight of last week's Democratic National Convention, according to the results of a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press poll released Monday.

Nearly three-in-10 Americans (29 percent) who watched at least a little of the coverage of the Charlotte convention said Clinton's address was the highlight of the gathering, while just 16 percent said President Obama's speech was the highlight. First lady Michelle Obama, who gave aprime-timeaddress on the first night of the convention, was not far behind thepresident, with 15 percent choosing her address as the highlight.

Clintondelivereda 48-minutespeech (a good 10 minutes longer than Obama's address!) during the second night of the convention that was very well-received.

Even Republicans have been singing Clinton's praises (albeit in an effort to ding Obama's image). In an interview with "Meet The Press," Mitt Romney said that Clinton "did elevate" the Democratic convention. And Romney has also sought to play Clinton against Obama in a TV adhe released the day after Clinton's speech in Charlotte.

The Pew poll data show that like Romney after the GOPconvention, changes to the way Obama was viewed changed only slightly after the Democratic convention. (The latest poll was conducted Friday through Sunday.)

Aplurality(48 percent) said their view of thepresidenthad not changed in thepastfew days. Sixty percent of Americans who watched at least a little convention coverage rated Obama's speech as excellent or good,comparedtojust53 percent who judged Romney's speech to be excellent or good.

Pew polled Americans after the Republican convention and found that Clint Eastwood's one-of-a-kind empty chair address was most often cited as the highlight of that gathering.

Clinton's 29 percent figure in the latest poll was higher than the 20 percent who said Eastwood's speech was the highlight of the GOP gathering.

In other words, Bubba sure knows how to command an audience.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



972 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 10, 2012 Monday 9:02 PM EST


Romney Web site echoed Obama's text;
"This was a junior staff confusion that has been updated and resolved," said Romney digital director Zac Moffatt in a statement.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 154 words


Whoever wrote the copy for Mitt Romney's digital donations Web site appears to have spent a little too much time looking at President Obama's campaign.

As first noticed by Matt Ortega, a Democratic new media consultant at the firm New Partners, the pitches for donating to Romney's campaign by Web, text, and e-mail were - until today - nearidenticalcopies of the language on Obama's donation page.That text has now been replaced with new language, after the similarities were highlighted by BuzzFeed and Salon.

"This was a junior staff confusion that has been updated and resolved, said Romney digital director Zac Moffatt in a statement.

Obamalaunchedhis text donation drive in late August; Romney followed abouta week later.Moffatt hasargued recentlythat though conventional wisdom gives Obama the edge in all things digital, Romney's online ad team is superior, and the Republican isbuildinga more engaged online following.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



973 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 10, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


The points of light still shine


SECTION: Style; Pg. C02


LENGTH: 320 words


After two weeks of partisan swagger in Tampa and Charlotte, Washington harked back two decades Friday to the kinder, gentler vibe of George H. W. Bush.

"We're all fans and supporters of 41 . . . and 43," 41's former vice president, Dan Quayle, told us at the Points of Light benefit dinner. "But this is more of a 41 crowd. It feels like a family reunion - bipartisan family reunion."

More than 250 guests (mostly Republican but with reps from both sides of the aisle, including Sam Nunn, Boyden Gray, Esther Coopersmith, George Pataki, Kristi Yamaguchiand Dikembe Mutombo) packed into an elegant tent at the Japanese Embassy for the organization's inaugural fundraising dinner.

Not present this time: GHWB himself, the man whose call to volunteer service inspired the group's establishment and who serves as its honorary chair. (Board president Neil Bush, his son, said the foundation's mission of matching eager helpers with thousands of nonprofits worldwide makes it "the e-Harmony of the volunteer world.") Last year, the former president and Barbara Bush were honored at an emotional tribute at the Kennedy Center. Friday's dinner honored UPS for donating more than 1 million volunteer hours, Bonnie McElveen Hunterfor her Red Cross work, Wes Moorefor helping veterans and Hands On Tokyo for tsunami disaster relief.

The night wasn't entirely politics-free: Emcee Al Roker couldn't resist Eastwooding before the live auction. "To help us raise money. . . President Barack Obama!" he said to the empty chair next to the podium. Ha ha. No blowback here, though: The auction added $64,000 to the night's $500,000 total.

Because Yamaguchi starred in an ad extolling Mitt Romney's work on the Salt Lake City Olympics, we figured she'd have something a little partisan to add.

"I don't talk about my politics," the skating gold medalist told us. Really? So . . . we can't assume anything from the ad? 

"Probably not." Okay, then!


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



974 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 10, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


Conventions recap: The five best speeches


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 754 words


The two parties' national conventions are (finally) in the political rearview mirror. But, before they drift entirely out of sight, we thought it was a worthwhile exercise to sift through the 8,000 (or so) speeches given by politicians (and non-politicians) in Tampa and Charlotte to find the five best. These are speeches that will probably have some resonance beyond simply winning plaudits in the convention hall - addresses that we may look back on in two (or 20) years and say, "That was a/the moment."

To be clear, not every speech - even among those who make the Fix's top five - will have the same effect that Barack Obama's 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention did. But, still, showing up on the biggest stage in politics is harder than it looks, and all five people below did just that.Without further ado, here are the Fix's five best convention speeches - in order of best-ness.

1. Bill Clinton: The competition for the top spot wasn't even close. Watching Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention was like watching Usain Bolt run or Lionel Messi play soccer. You know you are watching pure genius, someone who was born to do exactly what he is doing. Clinton's ability to take complicated arguments and boil them down to the simplest possible terms, his folksiness, his attacking with a smile - it was all on display during the speech. That Clinton added more than 2,000 words to the prepared speech through a series of ad-libs was the sort of cherry on top, an athlete at the highest level showing off because, well, he can. Had Clinton stopped about 10 minutes before he did, we'd likely be talking about his speech as one of the best convention addresses ever. 2. Marco Rubio: The expectations for the Florida senator heading into his speech introducing Mitt Romney at the Republican convention could hardly have been higher. Rubio is widely regarded within the Republican Party as the star among stars. In spite of all those expectations, Rubio soared - delivering a convincing case for why he was a Republican and why Romney was the right choice in November. In a Republican convention in which many of the party's much-touted future stars failed to impress, Rubio stood out as the class of the 2016/2020 class.

3. Michelle Obama: Speeches by first ladies tend to be boilerplate stuff: My husband is a good man, a good father, he cares about each and every one of you, and so on and so forth. (Check out Ann Romney's address for a very solid but very safe speech by a candidate's spouse.) Not so with Obama's address. Yes, the first lady did testify to the inherent goodness of her husband and did tell endearing stories about him before he was anywhere close to the White House. But she also did something bigger and better - making the case for who we are as Americans and why her husband was the right person to lead the country to a better future. She also, without naming names, made the case against the Republican vision - a subtle but important part of her speech. What Michelle Obama showed in her convention speech is that if she ever wants to run for office in her own right, she has the skills (and then some) to do so. 4. Condi Rice: The former secretary of state's speech was among the biggest surprises during the two convention weeks. (Other big surprises: how good Sen. John Kerry's speech was, how not-good Gov. Martin O'Malley's speech was.) Rice was pointed without being nasty, showed she could talk smartly about domestic policy (as opposed to solely foreign policy) and told her personal story - of growing up black in segregated Birmingham, Ala. - with poise and tenderness. Rice has never expressed interest in running for office, but her convention speech showed that she has the tools to be a very good politician if she wants to be.

5. Julian Castro: The competition for our final spot was fierce, but in the end it came down to the mayor of San Antonio and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. We went with Castro over Patrick because the step up to the massive national stage was bigger for the mayor than for the governor. (That said, Patrick did himself a world of good with his speech if he wants to run for president.) Castro's retelling of his personal story was moving and compelling, and he showed real political skills by attacking Romney without coming across as nasty or mean-spirited.chris.cillizza@wpost.com

For more from the Fix, go to washingtonpost.com/thefix.


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



975 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 10, 2012 Monday 8:12 PM EST


With Senate at stake, GOP awaits Akin's next move


BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman;Jason Horowitz


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1681 words


MARYVILLE, Mo. - Three weeks after Republican Rep. Todd Akin upended the national political landscape by claiming that pregnancies rarely result from "legitimate rape," the race for Senate in this increasingly conservative state - and in many ways the battle for control of Congress's upper chamber - has settled into a waiting game. A Sept. 25 deadline looms. That's the last day Akin can petition Missouri courts to remove his name from the ballot - and comply with the near-universal calls from party leaders who think his comments have made unwinnable a seat they need for an easier path to a Senate majority.

Akin's opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, is waiting, too - hoping that Akin remains in the race but knowing that even if he does, reelection to the Senate is far from secure in a state that has turned sharply against President Obama. In the balance could lie the Senate.

Republicans need four new seats to take control of the chamber. That appeared to be within closer reach for the GOP earlier this year, before Akin's comment - for which he has apologized - and before Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) announced her retirement, putting her seat in play.To win control now, Republicans must see a series of neck-and-neck races turn their way - a surprisingly thin margin of error in a year when nearly two dozen Democratic senators are up for reelection.

"The easiest path to a Republican majority went through Missouri. Without it, it's steeper and a little more circuitous," said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the nonpartisan _blankCook Political Report. "It can be done - but they need all the breaks."

Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report agreed. The Senate is "still up for grabs," he said. But he added: "It's looking harder for Republicans." Akin's rape comments on Aug. 19 breathed new life into McCaskill's struggling campaign. Now her challenge is to convince Missouri voters that her opponent is too radical not only on women's issues but also across a range of topics.

And so last week, while speaker after speaker at the Democratic National Convention - which McCaskill subtly skipped - alluded to Akin's stand on abortion, McCaskill embarked on a tour of Missouri college campuses.

"Congressman Akin is extreme and out of the mainstream," McCaskill told students at Northwest Missouri State University. Akin, she said, "doesn't understand what his policy positions will do to this state and to the country that we all love."

But she was not talking about his "legitimate rape" remark, which would have required her to dwell on the touchy issue of abortion. Instead, she was referring to Akin's contention, in an April debate during the Republican Senate primary, that federally backed student loans represent a "Stage 3 cancer of socialism." McCaskill called his position a "head scratcher" in her appearances last week, part of her effort to extend Akin's controversial remarks to the other corners of their hotly contested Senate race.

"This race will be hard-fought and close," McCaskill said in an interview. "Anybody who doesn't think it's going to be hard-fought and close hasn't spent much time on the ground in Missouri."

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Mason-Dixon poll taken in the days after the controversy showed McCaskill ahead by nine points, but other polling has indicated a much tighter race.

GOP Senate setbacks

The Akin fiasco is only the latest setback for Republican ambitions to take the Senate.

After Snowe announced she would not seek reelection in Maine, former governor Angus King, a popular independent, announced he would run to replace her, probably taking the state out of the Republican column and forcing the GOP to win five seats to guarantee control.

Then came Akin's interview, on a local St. Louis television station, in which he defended his position of opposing abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Republicans say they still feel confident about picking up a seat in Nebraska, where polls show Democratic former senator Bob Kerrey trailing Republican Deb Fischer to replace Sen. Ben Nelson (D), who is retiring. But to win the chamber, Republicans will also have to win a collection of races in which polls have been exceptionally tight. Their opportunities lie in North Dakota, where Democratic former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp has been running closer than expected with Republican Rep. Rick Berg, as well as in Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Florida.

Even with closer-than-expected contests in Wisconsin and Connecticut, the GOP will need a series of good breaks between now and November - and perhaps a strong pull from the top of the ticket by Mitt Romney - to take the Senate.Republicans had not figured that one of those breaks would have to come in Missouri.

Immediately after Akin's remarks, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) vowed to spend no money on his race, echoing the disdain of a leading independent super PAC associated with Karl Rove. Rove grew so frustrated with Akin's refusal to drop out that he jokingly insinuated to wealthy donors at the Republican National Convention about having Akin "murdered." He, too, apologized.

Without national support, Akin seemed vulnerable to a coming onslaught of McCaskill advertising expected to hit him on his abortion comment, as well as on student loans and his opposition to the minimum wage and school lunch programs.

On Friday, several Missouri television stations said they were canceling Akin ad buys after receiving only half of the scheduled payments, a sign the campaign may already be running out of cash. Campaign officials said they were merely reallocating dollars to spend more closer to Election Day.

National Republicans say there is no chance they will return to the race, noting that GOP officeholders in Missouri have declined to campaign with Akin and that the NRSC has even canceled $3 million in reserved ad time in the state.

But Akin advisers are not flinching. They say McCaskill remains beatable - her popularity has taken a dive here and she is vulnerable because of votes in favor of key Obama agenda items, including the stimulus and the health-care overhaul.

They say D.C. Republicans ultimately will not stay out of a race so critical to their national prospects - if they are convinced Akin won't end his campaign.

"Todd is in the race. That's a fact," said Rick Tyler, an Akin adviser. "They can either help or they can continue to abandon the race. And if they lose the Senate majority, they'll have only themselves to blame."

Akin backers

Akin has lately gotten encouraging signs from local Republicans that appear to be buoying his resolve to stick it out - and hurting the party's chances of taking the seat.

Two weeks ago, the Republican committee for the 8th Congressional District - representing more than two dozen Missouri counties - passed a resolution of support for Akin, the latest of several local Republican groups here to do so.

The campaign indicated Akin will announce next week that he has accepted invitations to debate after Sept. 25 - a renewed public statement of his intention to remain in the race.

But the division in Missouri is deep. Even the Missouri delegation at the Republican convention in Tampa expressed uncertainty. Some Missouri delegates wore "Akin for Senate" stickers as a sign of support, while others spoke openly about the shame he had brought the delegation.

"It was bad at home, it was bad on the road, it was bad at the airport, and it's bad here," said Kay Hoflander, a Missouri delegate at large.

Speaking off to the side from the delegation's seats beside the convention stage, she said that before coming to Tampa, her local chairman's office had been inundated with calls from former Akin supporters saying, "Come get this 4-by-8 sign off my lawn!"

When a storm canceled convention activities, the Missouri delegation hunkered down for a "Hurricane Dinner" of chicken and pizza at the airport Marriott and argued over their candidate.

At one table, Ralph Munyan, a Kansas City lawyer and delegate, listened as a fellow delegate told him she would not vote for Akin if he were the nominee. Another said many of her friends had "totally written off" Akin and intended to vote for McCaskill.

But Munyan, who was originally not a supporter of Akin and was also upset by the rape remark, nevertheless had taken to wearing an Akin sticker to protest party strong-arming and the way "the state party dropped Akin like a hot potato."

That backlash - stoked by strong support from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who has railed against party bosses - has tempered McCaskill's expectations and heartened Akin's campaign.

They say Rove's remarks and the meddling of national Republicans have boosted fundraising.

And last week, a videographer appeared at a McCaskill event at the University of Missouri at Kansas City - trying, on behalf of a national pro-business group, to get the Democratic incumbent on video talking union issues. That could be a sign that national groups might find ways to get more quietly involved, despite the talk of skipping the race.

Fred Wszolek, a strategist who serves as the spokesman for the Alexandria-based _blankWorkforce Fairness Institute, confirmed that his group - represented in the state by the _blankCoalition to Protect Missouri Jobs - sent the cameraman.He said the group is not a campaign organization but that it merely wants to get McCaskill on record stating her opinion of "microunions," department-by-department organized units recently allowed by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board.

"We're not playing in the campaign," he said. "We're engaged in issue conversation."

The group is active in Virginia and Montana, two other key Senate swing states. Asked if the organization is likely to run ads in Missouri explaining to voters McCaskill's view on the issue, Wszolek said, "I couldn't say."

heldermanr@washpost.com

horowitzj@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



976 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 10, 2012 Monday 6:40 PM EST


Welcome to the beginning of the end of the 2012 campaign;
What to keep an eye on in the final eight weeks of the 2012 campaign.


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza;Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 1080 words


With the two parties' conventions now over, the final days of the 2012 campaign are upon us. As this sort of beginning of the end - well - begins, it's worth noting a few things we know will matter in the battle between President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney over the next 57 days.

* The presidential debates: There will be three one-on-one face-offs between Obama and Romney over these final eight weeks of the campaign and they are, without question, the most important and influential factor when it comes to voters making up their minds. The presidential debates are set for Oct. 3, Oct. 16 and Oct. 22 with a vice presidential debate sandwiched in between on Oct. 11. (We tend not to put much stock in the VP debate's ability to change the race's dynamic although it sure will be interesting to see Joe Biden and Paul Ryan square off.)

To understand how important these debates can be, you only need to go back to the 2008 campaign when Obama's steady performance against Sen. John McCain convinced many undecideds in the electorate that he was ready for the job.

This time around, Romney has more to prove but also a bigger opportunity to use the debates as a springboard into the final days of the election. Obama is the known commodity in this race so all eyes will be on Romney to see if he looks like he belongs on stage and can give and take with the incumbent. Some Republicans believe that if Romney looks and sounds presidential in the debates, those five or six percent of undecideds looking for a reason to vote against Obama will have it.

* The September and October jobs reports: The September report will be released Oct. 5, while the October report comes out Nov. 2.

It's clear from last week's August jobs report that the economy won't get significantly better between now and Election Day. But the final two jobs reports will either be the icing on the top of the cake for Romney's argument that Obama doesn't know what he's doing or a bit of a break for the incumbent to argue that things are slowly but surely getting better.

No matter how the jobs reports turn out politically, they will get wall-to-wall media coverage given the intense focus by the electorate on the health (or lack thereof) of the economy. Given how few people are undecided, two bad reports (and the resultant press attention) could well swing the election to Romney. Two good - or even slightly better-than-expected - reports could hand Obama some momentum.

* Romney's money advantage: In the final eight weeks of the race, Romney, the Republican National Committee and the slew of outside conservative organizations like American Crossroads are going to dump hundreds of millions of dollars onto the TV airwaves in swing states - a barrage that Obama and his side simply will not be able to match.

At issue is whether the heavy spending by Obama's campaign during the summer months - as Romney was forced to wait until the GOP convention to begin to be able to spend general election funds - has defined the race in a way that is both a) beneficial to the incumbent and b) unchangeable even by the heaviest spending on the Republican side.

Democrats insist that's the case; that the choice has been established between a damaged but likable incumbent and an out-of-touch challenger who doesn't understand the struggles of the middle class. Republicans reply that Romney has survived Obama's spending onslaught and remains within striking distance, an ideal set of circumstances for them.

Beyond those three factors, it's hard to see much of anything - short of a massive gaffe that neither candidate is likely to commit - doing much to change the underlying nature of the race.

It's close today, and it will almost certainly be close for the next 57 days.

Romney raised $111.6 million in August: Speaking of Romney cash advantage, his campaign announced its August fundraising totals this morning, and it set a new personal record.

The campaignsaid it raised a total of $111.6 millionbetween its own committee, the Republican National Committee and a joint fundraising committee between the two. It had $168.5 million cash on hand at the end of the month, down from $185.9 million at the start of the month.

President Obama's campaign hasn't released its totals, but it has been outraised by a significant amount the last two months, as Romney hasbuilt a big cash advantagefor the stretch run.

NRCC launches Medicare ads: The National Republican Congressional Committee is going up with a series of ads on Medicare in five key House districts.

The combined buy is more than half a million dollars. The ads will run against Reps.Leonard Boswell(D-Iowa),Bruce Braley(D-Iowa) andLois Capps(D-Calif.) and Democratic candidatesGary McDowellin Michigan andJamie Wallin Wisconsin.

The ad demonstrate the GOP's intent to keep trying to play offense on an issue that Democrats saw falling into their laps when Ryan was picked as Romney's vice presidential pick.

Democrats have hit Republicans for wanting to turn Medicare into a voucher program; the GOP has countered by pointing to $700 billion in Medicare cuts contained in Obamacare.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committeehas also run ads on Medicarein recent weeks.

Fixbits:

Romney's campaignhas added Wisconsinto its most recent ad buy. The state was the one swing state that hadn't been included in the buy.

Obamagets a big bear hugthe campaign trail, while Bidencozies up to a female biker.

Some polling indicates Obama's leadhas grown in recent days, since the end of the Democratic National Convention.

A newAlbuqueque Journal pollshows Obama leading by just five points in blue-leaning New Mexico. The same poll shows Rep. Martin Heinrich (D)up by seven pointsin the open Senate race.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is up witha new adhitting former governor Tommy Thompson (R) for leaving Wisconsin for Washington D.C.

Another poll, from conservative-leaning Civitas,in North Carolina puts Republican Pat McCrory up by double digits in the state's open governor's race.

Must-reads:

"Did Barack Obama Save Ohio?" - Matt Bai, New York Times

"With Senate at stake, GOP waits on Akins next move, McCaskill goes on offense" - Rosalind S. Helderman and Jason Horowitz, Washington Post

"Romney says he would keep some parts of Obamas health-care law" - Bill Turque, Washington Post

"Congress Comes Back to a Face-Off With Angry Farmers" - Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



977 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 10, 2012 Monday 4:43 PM EST


Did Obama vote to deny rights to infant abortion survivors?;
An abortion survivor who claims she was discarded at birth said Barack Obama voted against rights for born-alive infants, and Mike Huckabee says the president believes life is "disposable" outside the womb. What are the facts?


BYLINE: Josh Hicks


LENGTH: 1993 words


"When he was in the Illinois state Senate, Barack Obama voted to deny basic Constitutional protections for babies born alive from an abortion - not once, but four times. I know it's by the grace of God that I'm alive today, if only to ask America this question: Is this the kind of leadership that will lead us forward - that would discard the weakest among us?"

- Failed-abortion survivor Melissa Ohden in a new ad from Susan B. Anthony List

"[Obama] supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb - even beyond the womb."

- Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee during a speech at Republican National Convention, Aug. 29, 2012

These claims mirror attacks from abortion opponents during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. They relate to a series of no votes the former state lawmaker cast in the Illinois legislature between 2001 and 2003 against state bills that would have defined the term "born alive infant" and ensured legal protections to such newborns.

Supporters said the born-alive legislation was necessary to protect children who survive failed abortions, and they argued that Obama's opposition showed an unwillingness to protect the lives of babies. Obama said unequivocally that he would have supported a born-alive act that didn't undermine abortion rights.

Antiabortion activists have picked up where they left off in 2008, attacking Obama on the same issue. Let's take a look at their claims to determine whether the president really voted to deny newborns basic constitutional protections and whether he truly believes human life is disposable - even beyond the womb. We'll also examine Melissa Ohden's claims about what happened after she survived an abortion.

Fair warning: Our analysis turned up several claims that are closely related to those in the quotes above. We'll cover all of them in this column, applying our Pinocchio ratings as appropriate.

The Facts

The antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List released a video with testimony from failed-abortion survivor Melissa Ohden, who criticized the president's Illinois Senate votes and said: "I was aborted and my body discarded like I didn't exist. But a nurse heard me crying and cared enough to save my life."

The Christian Broadcasting Network went a step further in explaining the details of Ohden's survival story, saying "a nurse heard [Ohden] crying from the discarded medical waste." An article on the Susan B. Anthony List similarly said, "The medical staff, prompted by a nurse who retrieved her from the trash, did not expect Melissa to live due to respiratory distress and other complications."

Accounts like these can elicit strong emotional responses, but they can easily go unquestioned because of their highly personal and sensitive nature. Yet they often stretch the truth, as was the case with a Three-Pinocchio video that implied that Obama's mother had haggled over health insurance while dying of cancer, or the Four-Pinocchio ad that suggested that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was responsible for the death of a woman who lost a battle with cancer after her husband was laid off from one of Bain Capital's companies - even though the GOP candidate stopped managing the private-equity firm well before the layoff occurred.

Let's determine whether anyone played loose with the facts in this case of an abortion survivor.

Ohden's Story

We wondered what Ohden meant when she said she was "discarded." She explained that, according to her adoptive mother, the medical staff "laid her aside" because they didn't think she would live. This sounds less dramatic than being "discarded," which could easily give viewers the impression that medical personnel disposed of her body - exactly what the Christian Broadcast Network and Susan B. Anthony List claimed.

A birth record posted on Ohden's Web site says nothing about the medical staff laying aside, discarding or leaving the newborn's body for dead. In fact, it shows that the medical staff took steps to preserve her life after checking her Apgar score - which measures the health of newborn babies - and hearing a weak cry.

Perhaps the doctor left out details about leaving the infant for dead. Ohden said, "Such information is not likely to ever be recorded.... I'm just lucky enough to have the information in my records that I do have."

But the fact remains that Ohden's medical records do not prove her case about being discarded. The antiabortion activist also acknowledged that her account of being "laid aside" after birth came from a secondary source - a nurse from the hospital where she was transferred.

Ohden said she was unable to put us in touch with anyone who actually witnessed her birth. In light of the only hard evidence available, she earns two Pinocchios for claiming she was "discarded" at birth.

Chuck Donovan, president of the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund, acknowledged that the antiabortion group made a mistake in saying a nurse retrieved Ohden's body from the trash. The organization promised to remove the "trash" reference from its article, but it still earns Three Pinocchios for embellishing Ohden's survival story.

Born-alive legislation

The anti-Obama claims from Huckabee and Ohden refer to a series of Illinois bills known as the Born Alive Infant Protection acts, which would have defined the term "born alive infant" as "any member of the species homo sapiens" expelled or extracted from his or her mother that exhibits "a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles."

The 2001 and 2002 measures included a controversial line that proved to be a sticking point. It said, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law."

Obama took issue with that part of the bill, saying it could interfere with a woman's right to an abortion, as established through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Here is an excerpt of his remarks from the 2001 floor debate:

"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a child, a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute."

Notice that Obama referred to "previable fetuses," or those that do not have a reasonable chance of survival outside the mother's body. Obama's primary concern seems to be that the born-alive act would prohibit aborting a fetus still inside the womb.

Critics contend that this interpretation is not necessarily true because some previable fetuses survive after delivery from an unsuccessful abortion. They argue that Obama essentially opposed protecting the survivors.

Illinois lawmakers voted down identical versions of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2001 and 2002 before a new iteration of the bill came before the Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, headed by Obama. This new legislation removed the controversial line about recognizing live-born children as humans and giving them immediate protection under the law. It also addressed Obama's concern about previable fetuses, adding a "neutrality clause" that said the measure would not affect the legal status of fetuses prior to delivery.

Nonetheless, Obama voted against the new bill, which happened to be an almost exact replica - almost to the word - of a federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act that passed in 2002 without opposition in either politial party. (Updated: The vote in the House was by voice vote and the vote in the Senate was by unanimous consent.)

Obama swore during the 2008 election that he would have supported the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, prompting the National Right to Life Committee to issue a scathing white paper that pointed out how he had contradicted himself by voting against the Illinois measure while backing the older federal version in retrospect during his presidential campaign.

Obama denied any contradiction during an interview that year with the Christian Broadcasting Network, accusing the antiabortion committee of lying about the circumstances of his vote. Here's what he said:

"I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying. I have said repeatedly that I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported - which was to say - that you should provide assistance to any infant that was born - even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion. That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. What that bill also was doing was trying to undermine Roe vs. Wade."

From what we can tell, Obama misrepresented the facts during this interview. The 2003 bill addressed his concerns about undermining Roe v. Wade, and it matched the federal legislation that he supported virtually word for word.

PolitiFact determined that the claim about a neutrality clause in the federal legislation was True. FactCheck.org said "Obama's claim [about the committee lying] is wrong."

For what it's worth, The Fact Checker in 2008 appears to have overlooked the neutrality clause while awarding Two Pinocchios in a column that examined a separate claim from then-GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. However, that oversight wouldn't have affected Palin's rating, because her claim was different - closer to the claim from Huckabee.

The evidence suggests we could have awarded Four Pinocchios to the former Illinois senator for his comments to the Christian Broadcasting Network, but that interview is several years old now, and it's not the focus of this particular column. The president's campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the matter of whether Obama's 2008 comments on the Christian Broadcasting Network contradicted his 2003 vote against Illinois's Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

Ohden and Huckabee

Ohden said that Obama "voted to deny basic Constitutional protections for babies born alive from an abortion." This is true in the sense that the Illinois bills would have guaranteed certain protections for these infants. But Ohden's claim lacks context: Obama's objections to the bill suggest that he wasn't so much bent on denying rights to newborns as wanting to block any legislation that could erode the premise of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Ohden earns one Pinocchio for her slanted take on the president's position.

Huckabee said Obama "believes that human life is disposable and expendable ... even beyond the womb." But this is a mischaracterization of the president's stance on the Born-Alive Infants Protection legislation in Illinois.

Granted, we don't know why Obama voted against the 2003 bill that included a clause to protect abortion rights. The measure never made it out of committee, and comments from the meetings are not recorded. Nonetheless, we find it hard to fathom that the former senator expressed a belief that human life is disposable outside the womb.

Huckabee earns Three Pinocchios for his twisted interpretation of Obama's no votes.

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



978 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 10, 2012 Monday 4:40 PM EST


Planned Parenthood launches $3.2 million campaign;
Planned Parenthood is launching its largest ad buy ever.


BYLINE: Rachel Weiner


LENGTH: 220 words


Planned Parenthood is launching its largest single ad buy ever, a $3.2 million campaign against Mitt Romney in Ohio and Virginia through the political arm Planned Parenthood Votes. The first ad starts airing Monday, a $1.85 million buy of five weeks of cable television in the Northern Virginia market.

The Virginia ad, called Turn Back the Clock," declares that "we should be making our personal medical decisions, not Mitt Romney."

Both Obama's campaign and Planned Parenthood have repeatedly attacked Romney for saying he would withdraw the organization's federal funding, seeking to widen the gap the president enjoys with women voters.

While in the ad Romney says he would "get rid" of Planned Parenthood - a clip from a KDSK interview - in context he was clearly talking about cutting off federal funding, not destroying the organization. Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg called the spot "another misleading adby the Presidents allies in an attempt to cover up for four years of failure."

At last week's Democratic convention, numerous speakers warned that women could lose their reproductive rights under a Romney presidency. One womandescribed the severe pelvic and abdominal pain that led her to a Planned Parenthood clinic 12 years ago a decision she says ensured she would be able to give birth to her daughter.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



979 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 10, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


With Senate at stake, GOP awaits Akin's next move


BYLINE: Rosalind S. Helderman;Jason Horowitz


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 1659 words


DATELINE: MARYVILLE, MO.


MARYVILLE, Mo. - Three weeks after RepublicanRep. Todd Akin upended the national political landscape by claiming that pregnancies rarely result from "legitimate rape," the race for Senate in this increasingly conservative state - and in many ways the battle for control of Congress's upper chamber - has settled into a waiting game.

A Sept. 25 deadline looms. That's the last day Akin can petition Missouri courts to remove his name from the ballot - and comply with the near-universal calls from party leaders who think his comments have made unwinnable a seat they need for an easier path to a Senate majority.

Akin's opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, is waiting, too - hoping that Akin remains in the race but knowing that even if he does, reelection to the Senate is far from secure in a state that has turned sharply against President Obama.

In the balance could lie the Senate.

Republicans need four new seats to take control of the chamber. That appeared to be within closer reach for the GOP earlier this year, before Akin's comment - for which he has apologized - and before Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) announced her retirement, putting her seat in play.

To win control now, Republicans must see a series of neck-and-neck races turn their way - a surprisingly thin margin of error in a year when nearly two dozen Democratic senators are up for reelection.

"The easiest path to a Republican majority went through Missouri. Without it, it's steeper and a little more circuitous," said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst for the nonpartisan _blankCook Political Report. "It can be done - but they need all the breaks."

Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report agreed. The Senate is "still up for grabs," he saidhttp://rothenbergpoliticalreport.com/. But he added: "It's looking harder for Republicans."

Akin's rape comments on Aug. 19 breathed new life into McCaskill's struggling campaign. Now her challenge is to convince Missouri voters that her opponent is too radical not only on women's issues but also across a range of topics.

And so last week, while speaker after speaker at the Democratic National Convention - which McCaskill subtly skipped - alluded to Akin's stand on abortion, McCaskill embarked on a tour of Missouri college campuses.

"Congressman Akin is extreme and out of the mainstream," McCaskill told students at Northwest Missouri State University. Akin, she said, "doesn't understand what his policy positions will do to this state and to the country that we all love."

But she was not talking about his "legitimate rape" remark, which would have required her to dwell on the touchy issue of abortion. Instead, she was referring to Akin's contention, in an April debate during the Republican Senate primary, that federally backed student loans represent a "Stage 3 cancer of socialism."

McCaskill called his position a "head scratcher" in her appearances last week, part of her effort to extend Akin's controversial remarks to the other corners of their hotly contested Senate race.

"This race will be hard-fought and close," McCaskill said in an interview. "Anybody who doesn't think it's going to be hard-fought and close hasn't spent much time on the ground in Missouri."

A St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Mason-Dixon poll taken in the days after the controversy showed McCaskill ahead by nine points, but other polling has indicated a much tighter race.

GOP Senate setbacks

The Akin fiasco is only the latest setback for Republican ambitions to take the Senate.

After Snowe announced she would not seek reelection in Maine, former governor Angus King, a popular independent, announced he would run to replace her, probably taking the state out of the Republican column and forcing the GOP to win five seats to guarantee control.

Then came Akin's interview, on a local St. Louis television station, in which he defended his position of opposing abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Republicans say they still feel confident about picking up a seat in Nebraska, where polls show Democratic former senator Bob Kerrey trailing Republican Deb Fischer to replace Sen. Ben Nelson (D), who is retiring.

But to win the chamber, Republicans will also have to win a collection of races in which polls have been exceptionally tight. Their opportunities lie in North Dakota, where Democratic former attorney general Heidi Heitkamp has been running closer than expected with Republican Rep. Rick Berg, as well as in Virginia, Montana, Ohio and Florida.

Even with closer-than-expected contests in Wisconsin and Connecticut, the GOP will need a series of good breaks between now and November - and perhaps a strong pull from the top of the ticket by Mitt Romney - to take the Senate.

Republicans had not figured that one of those breaks would have to come in Missouri.

Immediately after Akin's remarks, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) vowed to spend no money on his race, echoing the disdain of a leading independent super PAC associated with Karl Rove. Rove grew so frustrated with Akin's refusal to drop out that he jokingly insinuated to wealthy donors at the Republican National Convention about having Akin "murdered." He, too, apologized.

Without national support, Akin seemed vulnerable to a coming onslaught of McCaskill advertising expected to hit him on his abortion comment, as well as on student loans and his opposition to the minimum wage and school lunch programs.

On Friday, several Missouri television stations said they were canceling Akin ad buys after receiving only half of the scheduled payments, a sign the campaign may already be running out of cash. Campaign officials said they were merely reallocating dollars to spend more closer to Election Day.

National Republicans say there is no chance they will return to the race, noting that GOP officeholders in Missouri have declined to campaign with Akin and that the NRSC has even canceled $3 million in reserved ad time in the state.

But Akin advisers are not flinching. They say McCaskill remains beatable - her popularity has taken a dive here and she is vulnerable because of votes in favor of key Obama agenda items, including the stimulus and the health-care overhaul.

They say D.C. Republicans ultimately will not stay out of a race so critical to their national prospects - if they are convinced Akin won't end his campaign.

"Todd is in the race. That's a fact," said Rick Tyler, an Akin adviser. "They can either help or they can continue to abandon the race. And if they lose the Senate majority, they'll have only themselves to blame."

Akin backers

Akin has lately gotten encouraging signs from local Republicans that appear to be buoying his resolve to stick it out - and hurting the party's chances of taking the seat.

Two weeks ago, the Republican committee for the 8th Congressional District - representing more than two dozen Missouri counties - passed a resolution of support for Akin, the latest of several local Republican groups here to do so.

The campaign indicated Akin will announce next week that he has accepted invitations to debate after Sept. 25 - a renewed public statement of his intention to remain in the race.

But the division in Missouri is deep. Even the Missouri delegation at the Republican convention in Tampa expressed uncertainty. Some Missouri delegates wore "Akin for Senate" stickers as a sign of support, while others spoke openly about the shame he had brought the delegation.

"It was bad at home, it was bad on the road, it was bad at the airport, and it's bad here," said Kay Hoflander, a Missouri delegate at large.

Speaking off to the side from the delegation's seats beside the convention stage, she said that before coming to Tampa, her local chairman's office had been inundated with calls from former Akin supporters saying, "Come get this 4-by-8 sign off my lawn!"

When a storm canceled convention activities, the Missouri delegation hunkered down for a "Hurricane Dinner" of chicken and pizza at the airport Marriott and argued over their candidate.

At one table, Ralph Munyan, a Kansas City lawyer and delegate, listened as a fellow delegate told him she would not vote for Akin if he were the nominee. Another said many of her friends had "totally written off" Akin and intended to vote for McCaskill.

But Munyan, who was originally not a supporter of Akin and was also upset by the rape remark, nevertheless had taken to wearing an Akin sticker to protest party strong-arming and the way "the state party dropped Akin like a hot potato."

That backlash - stoked by strong support from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who has railed against party bosses - has tempered McCaskill's expectations and heartened Akin's campaign.

They say Rove's remarks and the meddling of national Republicans have boosted fundraising.

And last week, a videographer appeared at a McCaskill event at the University of Missouri at Kansas City - trying, on behalf of a national pro-business group, to get the Democratic incumbent on video talking union issues. That could be a sign that national groups might find ways to get more quietly involved, despite the talk of skipping the race.

Fred Wszolek, a strategist who serves as the spokesman for the Alexandria-based _blankWorkforce Fairness Institute, confirmed that his group - represented in the state by the _blankCoalition to Protect Missouri Jobs - sent the cameraman.

He said the group is not a campaign organization but that it merely wants to get McCaskill on record stating her opinion of "microunions," department-by-department organized units recently allowed by a ruling of the National Labor Relations Board.

"We're not playing in the campaign," he said. "We're engaged in issue conversation."

The group is active in Virginia and Montana, two other key Senate swing states. Asked if the organization is likely to run ads in Missouri explaining to voters McCaskill's view on the issue, Wszolek said, "I couldn't say."

heldermanr@washpost.com

horowitzj@washpost.com


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



980 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 10, 2012 Monday
Suburban Edition


Conventions recap: The five best speeches


BYLINE: Chris Cillizza


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 740 words


The two parties' national conventions are (finally) in the political rearview mirror. But, before they drift entirely out of sight, we thought it was a worthwhile exercise to sift through the 8,000 (or so) speeches given by politicians (and non-politicians) in Tampa and Charlotte to find the five best.

These are speeches that will probably have some resonance beyond simply winning plaudits in the convention hall - addresses that we may look back on in two (or 20) years and say, "That was a/the moment."

To be clear, not every speech - even among those who make the Fix's top five - will have the same effect that Barack Obama's 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention did. But, still, showing up on the biggest stage in politics is harder than it looks, and all five people below did just that.

Without further ado, here are the Fix's five best convention speeches - in order of best-ness.

1. Bill Clinton: The competition for the top spot wasn't even close. Watching Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention was like watching Usain Bolt run or Lionel Messi play soccer. You know you are watching pure genius, someone who was born to do exactly what he is doing. Clinton's ability to take complicated arguments and boil them down to the simplest possible terms, his folksiness, his attacking with a smile - it was all on display during the speech. That Clinton added more than 2,000 words to the prepared speech through a series of ad-libs was the sort of cherry on top, an athlete at the highest level showing off because, well, he can. Had Clinton stopped about 10 minutes before he did, we'd likely be talking about his speech as one of the best convention addresses ever.

2. Marco Rubio: The expectations for the Florida senator heading into his speech introducing Mitt Romney at the Republican convention could hardly have been higher. Rubio is widely regarded within the Republican Party as the star among stars. In spite of all those expectations, Rubio soared - delivering a convincing case for why he was a Republican and why Romney was the right choice in November. In a Republican convention in which many of the party's much-touted future stars failed to impress, Rubio stood out as the class of the 2016/2020 class.

3. Michelle Obama: Speeches by first ladies tend to be boilerplate stuff: My husband is a good man, a good father, he cares about each and every one of you, and so on and so forth. (Check out Ann Romney's address for a very solid but very safe speech by a candidate's spouse.) Not so with Obama's address. Yes, the first lady did testify to the inherent goodness of her husband and did tell endearing stories about him before he was anywhere close to the White House. But she also did something bigger and better - making the case for who we are as Americans and why her husband was the right person to lead the country to a better future. She also, without naming names, made the case against the Republican vision - a subtle but important part of her speech. What Michelle Obama showed in her convention speech is that if she ever wants to run for office in her own right, she has the skills (and then some) to do so.

4. Condi Rice: The former secretary of state's speech was among the biggest surprises during the two convention weeks. (Other big surprises: how good Sen. John Kerry's speech was, how not-good Gov. Martin O'Malley's speech was.) Rice was pointed without being nasty, showed she could talk smartly about domestic policy (as opposed to solely foreign policy) and told her personal story - of growing up black in segregated Birmingham, Ala. - with poise and tenderness. Rice has never expressed interest in running for office, but her convention speech showed that she has the tools to be a very good politician if she wants to be.

5. Julian Castro: The competition for our final spot was fierce, but in the end it came down to the mayor of San Antonio and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. We went with Castro over Patrick because the step up to the massive national stage was bigger for the mayor than for the governor. (That said, Patrick did himself a world of good with his speech if he wants to run for president.) Castro's retelling of his personal story was moving and compelling, and he showed real political skills by attacking Romney without coming across as nasty or mean-spirited.

chris.cillizza@wpost.com

For more from the Fix, go to washingtonpost.com/thefix.


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



981 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 10, 2012 Monday
Regional Edition


The points of light still shine


SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C02


LENGTH: 321 words


After two weeks of partisan swagger in Tampa and Charlotte, Washington harked back two decades Friday to the kinder, gentler vibe of George H. W. Bush.

"We're all fans and supporters of 41 . . . and 43," 41's former vice president, Dan Quayle, told us at the Points of Light benefit dinner. "But this is more of a 41 crowd. It feels like a family reunion - bipartisan family reunion."

More than 250 guests (mostly Republican but with reps from both sides of the aisle, including Sam Nunn, Boyden Gray, Esther Coopersmith, George Pataki, Kristi Yamaguchi and Dikembe Mutombo) packed into an elegant tent at the Japanese Embassy for the organization's inaugural fundraising dinner.

Not present this time: GHWB himself, the man whose call to volunteer service inspired the group's establishment and who serves as its honorary chair. (Board president Neil Bush, his son, said the foundation's mission of matching eager helpers with thousands of nonprofits worldwide makes it "the e-Harmony of the volunteer world.") Last year, the former president and Barbara Bush were honored at an emotional tribute at the Kennedy Center. Friday's dinner honored UPS for donating more than 1 million volunteer hours, Bonnie McElveen Hunter for her Red Cross work, Wes Moore for helping veterans and Hands On Tokyo for tsunami disaster relief.

The night wasn't entirely politics-free: Emcee Al Roker couldn't resist Eastwooding before the live auction. "To help us raise money. . . President Barack Obama!" he said to the empty chair next to the podium. Ha ha. No blowback here, though: The auction added $64,000 to the night's $500,000 total.

Because Yamaguchi starred in an ad extolling Mitt Romney's work on the Salt Lake City Olympics, we figured she'd have something a little partisan to add.

"I don't talk about my politics," the skating gold medalist told us. Really? So . . . we can't assume anything from the ad? 

"Probably not." Okay, then!


LOAD-DATE: September 10, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



982 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


The Issues? Yawn.


BYLINE: By DAVID JAVERBAUM.

David Javerbaum is the author of ''The Last Testament: A Memoir by God.''


SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; LOOSE ENDS; Pg. 2


LENGTH: 670 words


In this or any election year the candidates can be counted on to make regular references in their campaign speeches to ''the issues.'' It's important to realize that in doing so they are not actually alluding to the real-world challenges facing Americans. They are alluding to ''the issues'' -- just that, that actual two-word phrase.

The issues, of course, are what we all know elections are supposed to be about. In theory we want our public servants to be like those in Thucydides, appealing to our intellect with long, detailed, well-defended elaborations of their positions on those economic and geopolitical questions upon whose answers the future of our nation depends. But in practice, you were yawning by the end of that sentence.

Most of us just aren't built to endure that much debate. (And they weren't in ancient Greece either. Thucydides was the Aaron Sorkin of his day -- a great writer who used current events as the basis for inspiring and thought-provoking speeches no real person would or could ever actually say.)

No: we are human beings. We like personalities and ad hominem attacks and sex scandals and gossip. This is how Homo electorus rolls. But the Homo sapiens part of us feels guilty about this. We know we should be talking about the issues. We just don't wanna. Luckily, the candidates are just as uninterested in getting wonky as the electorate is, and the two sides have evolved an ingenious, mutually beneficial arrangement to make structuralists proud: Turn signifier into the signified. Like:

''I care about the issues facing this country.''

''The issues facing this country are far too urgent for me to spend the next 10 minutes outlining them.''

''I want this debate to be about the issues. The economy. Our future. How to make America great. [Pause.] I'll tell you what else is great -- the fried dough here at the Iowa State Fair!''

If you don't make me talk about policy, I won't make you think about it. That is the unspoken agreement behind ''the issues.'' It is the electoral equivalent of the agreed-upon ''safety word'' that automatically ends an S&M session before it gets too intense.

But the phrase's work is still not done, for the officeseeker must now use it to win over the crowd, allaying its guilt over its own attention-deficit disorder by blaming a scapegoat -- his opponent.

''My opponent wants to avoid the issues.''

''My opponent is dancing a contemptuous cha-cha around the issues.''

''My opponent doesn't think you're smart enough to discuss the issues. To talk in-depth about things like... prosperity. Jobs. Money. [Pause.] Although I will admit there is plenty of 'dough' here at the Iowa State Fair! [Aide whispers in ear.] I mean the Missouri State Fair!''

In this way, ''the issues'' triggers an instantaneous meta-shift in the terms of the debate. The candidate now seeks to be judged, not on what he believes, but on how seriously he can get you to believe he wishes he could talk about what he believes. (In fact, a sentence like ''My opponent wants to avoid the issues'' implies a character flaw in one's opponent that, in a bit of Möbius logic, is itself a distraction from the issues.)

''The issues'' is versatile enough to allow columnists, bloggers and pundits -- the collective unholy troika of all human misery -- to join the fun. By dint of nine simple letters, they can effortlessly pose as Apollonian intellectuals perched high above politics' dismal squalor.

''Why won't Barack Obama and Mitt Romney talk about the issues?''

''Why are we so fixated on a congressman who believes in magical spermicidal anti-rape vagina fairies instead of the issues?!?''

''Why are we so fixated on the Athenian general Alcibiades' regular attendance at Dionysian orgies in Attica and Sparta instead of on the issues?!?''

''The issues'' is a rhetorical head fake; a feint toward a line of discussion as unlikely to ensue as a Martian invasion; the theoretical magnetic north to which the conjectural needle of some hypothetically idea-driven campaign desperately wishes to point.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-issues-yawn.html


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



983 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Five Crucial Factors to Watch, Just 58 Days From the Election


BYLINE: By JEFF ZELENY and JIM RUTENBERG; Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Seminole, Fla.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; POLITICAL MEMO; Pg. 1


LENGTH: 1931 words


WASHINGTON -- Two months before the election, President Obama and Mitt Romney agree on one thing: the collection of states where the race will be decided.

As Mr. Obama opened a two-day bus tour of Florida on Saturday, Mr. Romney set his sights on trying to put Virginia back in the Republican column. Television advertisements from both sides were filling the airwaves in those two vital states and six others from Nevada to New Hampshire, while outside groups supporting the candidates tested for traction elsewhere.

With the political conventions over, the battle to determine whether Mr. Obama will win re-election or Mr. Romney will become the 45th president of the United States is fully engaged. The race has been deadlocked, according to many measures, and each side was predicting that it would see no lift from its convention. That seems to have been true in Mr. Romney's case, while Mr. Obama's aides were hopeful that new polls due out this week would prove them wrong.

But for now, Mr. Obama may hold a slight edge because the race remains essentially tied, which means voter disappointment has not turned into a resounding call for his defeat despite the challenging economic climate.

''Now, our friends at the other convention were more than happy to talk about what was wrong with America but not talking about what they'd do to make it right,'' he told supporters on Saturday in Seminole, Fla., only a few miles from the site of the Republican convention.

Mr. Romney, speaking to veterans in Virginia Beach on Saturday, referred to the disappointing jobs report released a day earlier. ''This week has not been a lot of good news,'' he said. ''But I'm here to tell you things are about to get a lot better.''

Presidential races take place on many levels, some easily visible, others more shrouded. As the clock runs down, both sides make tough decisions about which states to compete in and which to abandon. Advertising themes get tested and changed as strategists hunt frantically for the right appeals, and get-out-the-vote teams target wavering voters with tailored messages.

Behind closed doors, the candidates are preparing for the most crucial remaining events, the debates. And in courtrooms, lawyers are battling over who is on the ballot and who can vote.

Unforeseen events, economic or otherwise, could also still have a significant impact on the outcome of the race, much as the financial crisis did four years ago this fall.

Here are a few things to watch in the 58 days ahead:

Electoral Map

The roster of battleground states has not changed much, but one that Republicans had dearly hoped to put in play appears to have broken decisively: Pennsylvania. Mr. Romney spent time and money in the state, which voted Democratic in the last five presidential elections, but Republican strategists now say it seems out of reach.

Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes and is home to Mr. Romney's running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, may offer Mr. Romney the best chance to expand his options. Republicans have not won there since 1984, despite fighting hard in almost every election. Wisconsin was not one of the eight states where the Romney campaign placed its first flight of general election ads late last week, but one party strategist said, ''Keep watching.''

By this point, Mr. Romney had hoped to put at least a few more states into safer Republican territory. North Carolina, which Mr. Obama narrowly carried in 2008, is at the top of the list. But the state is still competitive enough that Mr. Romney and Republican groups feel compelled to keep advertising there, complicating their hopes of making Wisconsin and Michigan more competitive.

Some Democratic strategists say that winning Florida remains a reach for Mr. Obama, but his visit this weekend suggests that the White House has not given up and at a minimum will make Mr. Romney spend a lot more time and money in the state.

And Democrats say they are happily surprised by polls showing Mr. Obama running strong in Ohio, whose working-class voters have been exposed to heavy advertising portraying Mr. Romney as a job killer.

Debates

In a race that has featured little significant movement between the candidates, the three presidential debates this fall are taking on even greater importance.

For weeks, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have been preparing for their encounters on Oct. 3 in Denver; Oct. 16 in Hempstead, N.Y.; and Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.

With each passing debate, millions of Americans will probably cast their ballot, given the rise of early voting and balloting by mail in many Western states.

The president, whose advisers have known him to procrastinate before preparing for big moments, has been studying his rival's positions and statements from the primary campaign. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts will play the role of Mr. Romney in debate practice.

Mr. Romney may be a little further ahead in his preparations. His aides began putting blocks of time in his schedule shortly after he emerged from the primaries in the spring. He started formal practice sessions last week at a remote estate in Vermont, where Senator Rob Portman of Ohio played the role of Mr. Obama.

Tens of millions of people will watch the debates -- four years ago, viewership ranged from 52 million to 63 million -- almost certainly a much bigger television audience than the totals for the conventions.

Ads and Messages

After spending the spring and summer trying to turn Mr. Romney's success as a business executive from a positive to a negative, characterizing him as uncaring about the middle class, Mr. Obama's aides and allies intend to graft their portrayal onto specific policy areas.

They suggested that one attack, building on the president's argument that Mr. Romney intends essentially to privatize Medicare, would contend that the Republican ticket's next target would be another immensely popular program, Social Security.

In the past, Mr. Ryan has supported adding personal investment accounts to Social Security, a fundamental shift in the program that most Democrats say would leave the elderly vulnerable to unpredictable swings in the financial markets.

Having intently studied the 2004 race, when President George W. Bush won re-election after defining Mr. Kerry on his terms during the spring and summer, Mr. Obama's advisers are convinced that the most crucial advertising period is already over, and that they accomplished what they had to by introducing Mr. Romney to the nation as a rapacious capitalist.

Mr. Romney's team is betting that early ad spending is largely wasted, and that a final and furious campaign will move the race in his direction when it most counts. The campaign's belief is that continued disappointing economic data will feed its slogan, ''Obama Isn't Working,'' and give a new edge to the question that Mr. Romney is posing at every opportunity: ''Are you better off than you were four years ago?''

On Saturday, the Democratic ''super PAC'' Priorities USA Action released an advertising campaign highlighting a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that estimated that Mr. Romney's plans would raise taxes on the middle class while cutting them for the wealthy. The Romney campaign has said the finding is based on flawed assumptions.

Like the Democrats, Republicans say they intend to link their broader economic message to specific policies: cutting spending and reducing the national debt, working to ensure the solvency of Medicare for future generations, cutting expensive regulations and avoiding tax increases.

Over the next two months, residents of swing states will see ads on the issues that matter most to them: foreclosures in Nevada, Medicare in Florida, military spending in North Carolina and Virginia, and, especially from the Republicans, the federal budget deficit just about everywhere.

Mr. Obama and his supporters are telegraphing a new campaign intended to paint their opponents as pessimists betting against America, as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. put it on Thursday night.

''They are extremely pessimistic because they want to tamp down people's enthusiasm about the future,'' said Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.

But if Democrats go too far in that direction, Republicans will be ready to pounce and call them out of touch with reality.

Ballots

There is one factor in the campaign that has yet to get much attention but could influence the outcome: third-party candidacies in many states, most notably that of former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee.

Mr. Johnson, who argued for free markets, fewer wars and the legalization of marijuana during his brief run for the 2012 Republican nomination, hardly shows up in polls. But he is on the ballot in more than three dozen states and is trying for more.

Mr. Johnson shares some of the cross-party appeal of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who complimented him publicly last week. Advisers said Mr. Johnson's potential for cutting into Mr. Romney's support was greatest in Florida, where Mr. Romney is basically tied with Mr. Obama, but could also have an impact in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

They said Mr. Johnson's potential to eat into Mr. Obama's support was greatest in Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin.

Republican officials have already tried to challenge Mr. Johnson's place on the ballot or are trying to in states including Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Many of the challenges have failed -- courts recently rejected efforts to throw him off the ballot in Virginia -- and Roger Stone, a Republican Party veteran who is advising Mr. Johnson, said he was optimistic that Mr. Johnson would qualify in all 50 states.

The Republican Party of Virginia also failed in a bid last week to remove former Representative Virgil Goode from the presidential ballot there. He is the nominee for the Constitution Party and could draw disaffected Tea Party adherents away from the Republican Party.

Money

For the first time since the advent of public financing after Watergate, neither major-party candidate will accept matching funds, forcing both to keep raising money right up until Election Day. That means Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have to build substantial room into their schedules for fund-raising, including more time than they would like traveling to places that are not competitive politically but are flush with wealthy donors, starting with New York and Los Angeles.

At the end of July, when the last official figures were available, Mr. Romney and the related Republican Party presidential committees had about $186 million on hand, compared with about $124 million for Mr. Obama and the Democrats. On Saturday, Mr. Obama wrote in a Twitter message that his convention had prompted 700,000 new donations to his campaign.

Still, Mr. Obama's advisers have expressed concerns that the Romney war chest, combined with well-financed Republican super PACs, will swamp them and Priorities USA Action when it comes to advertising. But much of the Obama campaign's money is going into its sophisticated voter-identification and get-out-the-vote operation, which is fully up and running, while Mr. Romney rushes to build his own.

''We have a strategic advantage on the ground -- the ability to turn our voters out and talk to persuadable voters -- and that's what we're going to do,'' said Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager.

PHOTO: Mitt Romney campaigned Saturday at a Nascar event at the Richmond raceway in Virginia. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A17)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/politics/obama-romney-battle-plans-set-for-final-charge.html


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



984 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


G.O.P. Senator Uses President for Help in Ad


BYLINE: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 16


LENGTH: 759 words


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- President Obama is appearing in yet another television commercial in the Massachusetts Senate race. This time, it was not produced by the Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren, but by the Republican, Senator Scott P. Brown.

The advertisement, which was scheduled to start running on Saturday, shows Mr. Obama praising Mr. Brown for sponsoring a bill to end insider trading in Congress. As Mr. Obama signs the measure into law, he thanks Mr. Brown, saying, ''Good job.''

With the political conventions over and the Labor Day parades behind them, Mr. Brown and Ms. Warren are entering a new phase of their intensely fought race, the most expensive Senate contest in the country and one of a handful that will determine which party controls the chamber next year. The race is distinctive in another way: in this state, Mr. Obama is so popular that candidates from both parties are trying to hitch their wagons to his star.

That approach would be unusual enough for a Democrat in a year in which many feel the need to distance themselves from the administration, but it is virtually unfathomable for a Republican. That both candidates are trying to leverage their ties to Mr. Obama underscores how popular the president is here and how unpopular his rival, Mitt Romney, is, even though he once served as the state's governor. Mr. Obama is expected to carry Massachusetts overwhelmingly in November.

Mr. Brown's new ad is a clear overture to independent voters, who make up more than 52 percent of the state's electorate. It seeks to reassure them that splitting their ticket -- voting for a Democrat for president and a Republican for the Senate -- can still mean that things will get done in Washington.

The commercial follows weeks of other ads in which various former Democratic officeholders have endorsed Mr. Brown; on Friday, his campaign rolled out a ''Democrats for Brown'' coalition that includes a state representative, Christopher G. Fallon of Malden, and other officials.

The strategy may be paying off. Over the last few weeks, Mr. Brown appears to have been inching ahead of Ms. Warren in the polls, though the race still seems to be within the statistical margin of error. Significantly, he has been building a strong lead over Ms. Warren among independents. Polls suggested that he was attracting as many as one in five Democrats and one in four Obama voters.

''The race is going to be won or lost among the independents,'' said David Paleologos, a pollster at Suffolk University in Boston. ''The onus is on the Warren campaign to define and clarify what having a Republican Senate means and to force people to vote straight Democratic.''

Ms. Warren was able to cloak herself in the Obama glory last week with a prime-time speaking role at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. (Mr. Brown, by contrast, opted out of a speaking role the previous week at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.)

Mr. Obama makes regular cameos in Ms. Warren's television ads, usually with the two of them in the Rose Garden. And on Thursday night, after officially becoming the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, Ms. Warren noted in a statement that her name would appear on the November ballot ''just below President Barack Obama's,'' a reminder of how easy it would be to vote a straight ticket.

But Ms. Warren's anticorporate, anti-Wall Street message seems aimed squarely at the party's progressive wing, which is more enthusiastic about her than it is about Mr. Obama. Her strategy so far seems to be to fire up that base and hope the moderates and independents come along.

Ms. Warren, who teaches at Harvard Law School, said Thursday that she would not adjust her message to try to appeal more to independents or to any particular group, adding that she was simply giving voice to the concerns that voters have raised with her.

''I'm not a politician, and the idea that I could calibrate something is just kind of beyond my reach,'' Ms. Warren said outside her polling place here after voting for herself in her party's uncontested Senate primary.

Meanwhile, the political world is waiting for Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, a Democrat who sits atop a potent political machine, to choose sides. Insiders speculate that he will soon endorse Ms. Warren, but he is friendly with Mr. Brown and has teased out his neutrality long enough to give her campaign the jitters.

PHOTOS: An ad for Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, whose Democratic rival is Elizabeth Warren, shows the president telling him, ''Good job.''


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/politics/senator-scott-p-brown-turns-to-obama-for-campaign-help.html


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



985 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final


Cutting The Deficit, With Compassion


BYLINE: By CHRISTINA D. ROMER.

Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.


SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 5


LENGTH: 1355 words


ASIDE from the empty chair that Clint Eastwood debated, the main prop at the Republican convention was a debt clock, highlighting the federal deficit and the growing national debt. The importance of dealing with the deficit will clearly be a major Republican theme this fall. So far, Democrats have mostly been playing defense on this issue by criticizing the Romney-Ryan approach. It's time for them to go on offense by putting their own plan front and center.

Thanks to former President George W. Bush -- remember the compassionate conservative? -- I have a good name for the fundamental principle that should guide the Democratic alternative: compassionate deficit reduction. The essence is to cut the deficit in a way that does as little harm as possible to people, jobs and economic opportunity. This principle was implicit in much of what President Obama proposed in his 2013 budget, and in what he said about the deficit at the Democratic convention on Thursday. But embracing it more explicitly would improve the substance of the president's plan, and make it easier to explain to voters.

The first tenet is to go slowly. Investors are willing to lend to the United States at the lowest interest rates in our history. That gives us the ability to cut the deficit on our own timetable. We should pass a comprehensive, aggressive deficit reduction plan as soon as possible, but the actual spending cuts and tax increases should be phased in as the economy recovers.

Why is this the compassionate approach? Because immediate, extreme austerity would plunge us back into recession. The Congressional Budget Office set off alarm bells a few weeks ago when it said that going over the fiscal cliff -- a reference to the nearly $500 billion of automatic fiscal contraction scheduled for the start of 2013 -- would cause a rapid rise in unemployment. Well, duh.

A crude rule of thumb is that every $100 billion of deficit reduction will cost close to a million jobs in the near term. If that isn't a reason to move gradually, what is? But if you need another, just look at Europe.

A concrete way to adjust gradually is to pair serious long-run deficit reduction measures with equally serious, near-term jobs measures -- like a sizable short-run infrastructure program and a one-year continuation of the payroll tax cut for working families first passed in 2010. President Obama advocated both in his proposed American Jobs Act last September.

Even better would be to give businesses increasing employment a tax credit so large they couldn't help but notice it, and state and local governments a round of aid generous enough to finally stop the hemorrhaging of teacher jobs and essential government services.

A second feature of compassionate deficit reduction is well-designed tax reform that raises at least some additional revenue. Our budget problems are so large that solving them entirely through spending cuts would devastate the social safety net and slash investments essential for long-run growth and economic opportunity. So revenue increases must be part of the package.

President Obama has repeatedly urged Congress to let the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250,000 a year. Increasing rates on top earners is an obvious way to raise revenue from those who can afford it most.

Many experts also recommend raising revenue by lowering tax expenditures -- the roughly $1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes in the income tax code. Cutting tax expenditures would probably have fewer undesirable incentive effects than raising marginal tax rates. But it's important to move carefully. Many tax expenditures, like the mortgage interest deduction and the tuition credit, go to middle-class families. Cutting only those expenditures wouldn't be compassionate: it would shift tax burdens toward ordinary families already struggling to make ends meet.

One big tax expenditure benefiting the wealthy is the low tax rate on capital gains and dividends. The tax cuts of 2003 lowered the top rate on this income to 15 percent, far below the 35 percent top rate on other income. Compassionate deficit reduction requires a willingness to raise this preferential rate.

Government health care spending is a major cause of our terrifying long-run budget outlook. Any effective deficit plan has to slow that spending growth. But a compassionate plan would minimize risk to people, especially the most vulnerable.

The central question is whether Medicare and Medicaid should remain entitlement programs guaranteeing a certain amount of care, as Democrats believe, or become defined contribution programs in which federal spending is capped, as Republicans suggest.

Democrats have been forceful in explaining that if the federal contribution is limited and competition doesn't magically slow costs commensurately, individuals and states will have to pay more. With Medicare, if individuals couldn't pay the extra cost, they'd have to settle for less complete coverage and fewer benefits. With Medicaid, if states weren't willing to pay the extra cost, they'd have to throw people off the rolls.

But Democrats need to explain their own plans for slowing government health care spending. To start with, they shouldn't be defensive about having found $716 billion of Medicare savings as part of the health care reform legislation. They should explain, as former President Bill Clinton did in his speech on Wednesday, that these were reasonable changes that reduced overpayments to providers. They should ask Mitt Romney, who has vowed to roll back these reforms, why he wants to waste taxpayers' money.

Moreover, Democrats should explain that compassionate deficit reduction will involve more such reforms. Fortunately, there is much inefficiency in the current system, so it should be possible to cut costs without lowering benefits. But if we can't save enough money by reducing waste and finding better ways to provide care, we might have to consider more painful choices.

Making the wealthy pay a larger share of their Medicare costs, through further means-testing of benefits, would be one way to go. Gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age would be another. That may not sound like a winning message until you contrast it with the Republican plan, which trusts private insurers to decide how to cut costs.

Dealing with the deficit will require more than increasing revenue and reforming health care programs. We'll also have to cut other spending. Compassionate deficit reduction requires that we choose carefully what to trim.

Spending that protects children, such as money for school lunches and vaccinations, must be maintained. So should assistance for workers displaced by international trade and for veterans struggling to recover from combat wounds.

Democrats shouldn't be ashamed to advocate actually increasing spending that encourages opportunity and long-run growth. Aid for effective public education and Pell grants that help low-income students go to college aren't luxuries -- they are the building blocks of tomorrow's labor force and the foundation of the American dream. And spending on infrastructure and basic scientific research is essential for the growth of productivity and standards of living.

BUT to make support for good spending credible, compassionate deficit reducers should be specific about what they would cut. Personally, I'd start with agricultural price supports and subsidized crop insurance programs that mainly benefit large commercial farmers. High-speed rail might be next. (Sorry, Mr. Vice President.) And if the defense secretary says that there is $487 billion that can be safely cut from the Pentagon's budget over the next 10 years, we should listen to him.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it. But deficit reduction is coming, and this election will most likely determine how it's done. Democrats owe it to the American people to detail their more compassionate approach so that voters can make an informed choice.

DRAWING (DRAWING BY SKIP STERLING)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/business/cutting-the-deficit-compassionately-economic-view.html


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



986 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 9, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


Romney bailout charge is Biden baloney


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A section; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 957 words


"Let me quote from a recent article. Quote, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout, end of quote, when Bain Consulting was on the verge of collapse. The way Bain Consulting reorganized cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million. Now, imagine that. It was one thing when a million middle-class jobs were on the line. It was another thing when his own financial interests and those of his partners are on the line."

- Vice President Biden, Lordstown, Ohio, Aug. 31 

When we first looked at this issue, we noted that the Obama campaign had very carefully and cleverly avoided saying directly that Mitt Romney obtained a taxpayer-funded bailout when he led a rescue of his old consulting firm, Bain & Co. But now Vice President Biden, seizing on a new report in Rolling Stone magazine, has dropped all pretense and declared that the deal "cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million."

This issue briefly flared up during the Republican primary season, when former House speaker Newt Gingrich raised it, so let's see what really happened.

The Facts

First, Bain & Co. is not the same thing as Bain Capital, the private equity firm from which Romney made his fortune. Bain Capital is a spinoff from Bain & Co., which is a traditional consulting firm. But in the early 1990s, Bain & Co. overextended itself after an ill-advised decision in 1985-1986 by the firm's eight founding partners to take $200 million out of the firm, for themselves, with borrowed money. (Romney, who had left in 1984, was not a founder.)

In 1990, Romney was brought in to fix things. He certainly had a stake in the outcome, in part because the Bain brand name would be damaged by a bankruptcy and because Bain & Co. partners were investors in Bain Capital.

According to the book by Boston Globe reporters, "The Real Romney," Romney drove a hard bargain with the firm's creditors but especially with his former colleagues: "He was toughest when it came to negotiation with the partners at Bain & Company. He told the founding partners they had to give up about $100 million, or half the money they'd been planning to take out of the firm."

Other lenders accepted 80 cents on the dollar, realizing that a default would leave them with even less.

Meanwhile, Bain & Co. also owed $38 million to the Bank of New England. But the Bank of New England had made many bad loans, and by early 1991 it had been seized by the federal government. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold the bank to Fleet Financial, a Rhode Island bank, and a Fleet subsidiary was tasked with trying to collect on the outstanding loans.

After months of negotiations, the outstanding loan was reduced by $10 million, including forgone interest.

The FDIC deals with this problem constantly when it seizes banks, figuring out how it can get the most money out of distressed loans. Changing the terms or reducing the loan is fairly typical, as the FDIC indicates in its Guide to Bank Failure.

The FDIC's Resolution Handbook also says (page 80):

"Restructuring a loan for a financially distressed borrower is normally more productive for the receiver than foreclosing on the collateral or initiating lawsuits to collect the debt. Maximizing recovery on failed institution assets is the receiver's responsibility, and litigation expenses can very rapidly consume any funds recovered."

The FDIC tries to collect as much as possible, but ultimately has to make good on deposits at least up to $250,000. (In the Bank of New England case, the limit was $100,000 at the time, but the agency decided to guarantee all deposits.) But any shortfall is made up through assessments made on FDIC-member banks.

That's right - no taxpayer money is involved. The FDIC prides itself on not taking taxpayer funds.

So does this qualify as a "bailout"? The dictionary definition of bailout refers to "rescue from financial distress." By that standard, some of the Bain Capital deals so heavily criticized by the Obama campaign, such as Ampad and GS Industries, might qualify as "bailouts." A more proper term - the one used by the FDIC - is "loan restructuring."

The Rolling Stone article cited by Biden, headlined "The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney," has one new element - documents from the FDIC that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents are certainly interesting, demonstrating some of Romney's hardball tactics to obtain a favorable outcome, including threatening to drain the company's cash position by paying out bonuses if a deal was not reached.But though Rolling Stone repeatedly uses the phrase "bailout," as we explained above, this did not involve taxpayer funds or government funds.

The Rolling Stone article concedes this point: "While taxpayers did not finance the bailout, the debt forgiven by the government was booked as a loss to the FDIC - and then recouped through higher insurance premiums from banks."

The article argues that because such fees typically are passed on by banks to consumers, then the American people "ultimately" paid for the loan reduction. That is certainly an interesting argument, but it's not the same thing as "the government and American taxpayers."

The Pinocchio Test

Biden should have read the Rolling Stone article more carefully before citing it in a campaign speech. We had previously said the use of the term "bailout" was a stretch, worthy of a Pinocchio, but the vice president takes it to a new level by claiming Romney "cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million." No matter how you parse it, that's simply not correct.

Three Pinocchios

kesslerg@washpost.com

Read more Fact Checker columns at washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



987 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 9, 2012 Sunday 8:12 PM EST


The candidates' message: I might be so-so, but the other guy is terrible The candidates' message: I might be so-so, but the other guy is terrible


BYLINE: Drew Westen


SECTION: Outlook; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 2364 words


Four stories are at the heart of any campaign. If you understand them, you know who controls the message - and with it, perhaps the election. These stories make up what campaign strategists call the "message grid," which has four quadrants. The first two comprise the positive stories the candidates are telling about themselves; the other two feature the negative stories each candidate is telling about the other.

In some elections, one quadrant of the grid dominates the conversation - for example, when the economy or a candidate is particularly strong or weak. Campaigns jostle for position on the grid, trying to emphasize the stories they prefer and to alter elements of the stories their opponents are effectively telling. In 2008, the stars were aligned for a new and exciting candidate to tell a story about hope and change after eight years of fear and loathing, skillfully turning his "different-ness" into an asset.

But 2012 is not 2008. This year, the stories President Obama and Mitt Romney can tell about themselves are just not that compelling. In contrast, the stories they have to tell about each other are far more powerful. As we put the theater of the conventions behind us and move into the homestretch of the campaign, that simple fact - along with the omnipresence of outside groups flush with unchecked money and unchecked facts - means we can expect the nastiest two months of attack ads in modern American history. The stories in the first two quadrants, the positive ones the candidates tell about themselves, are usually the stuff of biography ads, warm-and-fuzzy convention videos and "humanizing" testimonials from spouses and elderly parents. These stories seek to establish a relationship with voters, leaving them with the sense that the candidate shares their values, understands people like them and is the right person for the times.

The best of these stories weave together a candidate's life and values with the lives and values of everyday people. In 1992, when Americans were anxious about a faltering economy, Bill Clinton stepped in as the "man from Hope." His life story - a poor boy from a small town in Arkansas whose father died in a car accident before he was born but who made good despite adversity - suggested that anyone could make it in America.

Yet stories in this positive space don't have to be so personal to be effective. Ronald Reagan never focused strongly on his life history. But the tale his reelection campaign told in his "Morning in America" ad - of a nation that was moving again, strong again and proud again - was one of the most powerful in recent memory. Like Clinton's story, it provided the kind of hope and enthusiasm that captivates an electorate, and the positive emotion that propels a campaign forward.

The stories in the remaining two quadrants in the grid are less inspiring but just as important. They reinforce or supply voters' anxieties or misgivings about an opposing candidate, motivators that can be just as potent as enthusiasm and hope. We often associate these negative stories with the underbelly of politics - as when associates of George H.W. Bush used racial politics against Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988 with the infamous "Willie Horton" ad, which told the story of a convicted black murderer who raped a white woman while out of prison on a furlough program approved by Dukakis. As much as we may think of the first two quadrants as the "good" ones, and the last two as negative and destructive, retelling your opponent's story to stoke voters' negative emotions can be essential to an effective - and ethical - political campaign. In 2008, for example, the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, pulled ahead of Obama for the first time at the beginning of September, in part because Obama sought to run almost entirely in one quadrant of the grid - telling his own story and rarely mentioning the name of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Although that might seem virtuous, it would probably have seemed less so if McCain had won the election and continued many of the policies that destroyed the economy. Not until Obama and his allies went negative and began painting his opponent as "McSame as Bush" did Obama pull back ahead, where he'd stay through Election Day.

In the 2012 race, the big themes and stories of the campaign have already become clear. In these final eight weeks of campaigning and advertising, and during the presidential and vice presidential debates, we will see both campaigns relentlessly hammering home their central stories in the message grid: Obama on Obama Over the past few months, as the Occupy movement brought debates over inequality and "the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent" into the national conversation, Obama has recast himself as a populist, emphasizing that he stands with the middle class, whereas Romney stands on it. This is a smart strategy. It frames the election as a choice, not a referendum on an economy that remains bleak nearly four years into Obama's presidency. It also brings him back into what has been the mainstream of Democratic values ever since Franklin Roosevelt remade the Democrats as the party of working- and middle-class families. And it capitalizes on the populist rage that has energized the tea party movement since 2010, an anger that Democrats allowed Republicans to own.

But Obama has to walk a tightrope in telling this story, one he didn't face in 2008, when in many ways the very fact of his candidacy was the story. Although he wants to emphasize the progress we've made since the Great Recession bequeathed to him by Bush and the Republicans, most Americans remain stressed to the breaking point and pessimistic after years of struggle. They aren't buying any message suggesting that happy days are here again. With unemployment standing stubbornly above 8 percent, this is not a year when an incumbent wants to run on his economic achievements. The best summary Obama has of his accomplishments - domestic and international - is one that sticks: General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead. That says it all.

Romney on Romney

While Obama has probably done as well he can with a relatively weak story about himself, Romney has proved far worse at conveying a positive story, even when he has one to tell. The story he wants to tell is that, as a successful businessman, he gets how the economy works and how to create jobs; that unlike Obama, who has had nearly four years to repair a failing economy, Romney understands how to get America working again. This is a strong story to offer voters desperate to hear that someone knows how to put an end to their daily struggles.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the vice presidential nominee, argued persuasively at the Republican convention that Americans generally view business success as something to celebrate, not attack. By extolling his business and management experience, Romney is suggesting an analogy, one most Americans believe, between running a business and running a government.

Like Obama's, however, Romney's narrative is fraught with dangers. First and foremost, while Americans are generally friendly to business, that friendship is strained after years of outsourcing, skyrocketing executive compensation coupled with plummeting wages for workers, and outrage that big business is writing the rules in Washington. Second, Romney shouldn't need to liken executive experience in business with executive experience in government. As the former head of Bain Capital and the former governor of Massachusetts, he already has both. He's also run a public-private partnership, the Olympics, and Americans across the political spectrum want to see government and business working together to foster prosperity. But to win the Republican nomination, he had to hide his record as a moderate leader of a progressive state and disavow his signature achievement as governor: a health-care plan that in many respects was the prototype for Obamacare. That's why we've heard so little in Romney's "positive" story about his years in public service.

What should be clear is that both candidates are holding very weak hands when it comes to the first two quadrants of the message grid of 2012. The best Obama can say is, "It could have been worse." And the best Romney can say is, "It could have been Newt."

Obama on Romney

Obama's story about his opponent is borrowed from the one Sen. Ted Kennedy offered in his 1994 Senate race against Romney and from the one Newt Gingrich retold so well during the GOP primaries: that Romney is a "vulture capitalist," a man whose idea of a successful business model is to pick at the carcasses of moribund companies or to turn healthy companies that hire Americans into tottering ones that lay them off. According to this story, Romney understands employment so well because he knows how to end it - or ship it overseas.

"Now you have a choice," Obama told the Democratic convention during his speech accepting the party's nomination. "We can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America."

In part because Team Obama has made the case so effectively, and in part because Romney and his strategists seem to have the instincts of political animals that long ago went extinct, Obama has succeeded in making this the central story of the campaign - far more central than his story about himself. If he is able to keep this up, he is headed for reelection.

He has offered other stories as well, describing Romney as a flip-flopper who has been on every side of every issue, and even pulling out the brilliant line used by Kennedy against his Senate rival: Whereas Kennedy was pro-choice, Romney was multiple-choice. The president's campaign has also used Romney's pandering to the right wing of his party on social issues to paint him as an extremist leading a party of misogynists.

Romney on Obama

Only at the GOP convention did Romney really begin articulating the story he should have been telling from the start. Obama has made the election a referendum on his challenger, a great strategy in tough economic times. But Romney's message is that the president has had four years to fix the economy, and he just can't do it. Although he and Ryan didn't always get their facts straight, they did get their stories straight: that more than 20 million Americans still can't find full-time work or any work at all, and that their kids need to be able to stay on their parents' health insurance until they're 26 because so many of them can't find jobs.

"This president can ask us to be patient," Romney said during his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination. "This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. This president can tell us that the next four years, he'll get it right. But this president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office."

If there's a message that can defeat Obama, this is it. It not only strikes at the president's greatest point of vulnerability, it creates a link between Romney and the icon of the conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, who used the "Are you better off?" line so potently against Jimmy Carter. It also resonates with the two-thirds of Americans who believe that the country is on the wrong track. In his brilliant address to the Democratic convention Wednesday, Bill Clinton defused this attack, stating categorically that neither he nor any of his predecessors could have fixed such a broken economy in four years. But I suspect that most Americans were less convinced that someone with a clearer vision and greater capacity to lead couldn't do better. Whether Romney fits that description is the key question for undecided voters. These are the stories we can expect to hear for the next two months. If this campaign hasn't focused enough on the negative quadrants of the grid already, we can expect unbridled negativity from here on out. Sure, we'll hear ads attempting to "humanize" Romney or emphasize the accomplishments of a president whose campaign of hope and change in 2008 has morphed into a campaign of search and destroy. But between a blitz of attack ads courtesy of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, and a citizenry that is anything but united, we're going to see only half a grid - the negative half.

The prospect of an unrelenting campaign of negativity - and the very notion of the message grid - is not an accident of American politics. It capitalizes on a counterintuitive fact about the human brain, one that psychologists and neuroscientists understand as well as the best political strategist: Positive and negative feelings are not just opposites. The neural circuitry that produces feelings such as enthusiasm and disgust is almost entirely distinct. Nothing in our brains prevents us from associating diametrically opposite feelings with the same person - a point driven home by polls showing that most voters find Obama more likable than Romney but feel more favorably about Romney's capacity to handle the economy.

The implications for our politics are profound. The ads or stories that drive up one candidate's positives may not be the same ads or stories that drive up the opposing candidate's negatives. And you don't win an election with half a brain.

outlook@washpost.com

Drew Westen is a professor of psychology at Emory University and founder of Westen Strategies. He is the author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation" and the forthcoming "What's Left?"

Read more from Outlook: If Obama loses the election, here's why

Both Obama and Romney would bear the burdens of health-care reform Remember the war in Afghanistan? Obama and Romney don't seem to.

Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



988 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 9, 2012 Sunday 5:52 PM EST


Why the GOP is winning the battle over Paul Ryan;
A new poll shows Democrats have yet to define Paul Ryan in a coherent way.


BYLINE: Aaron Blake


LENGTH: 811 words


TAMPA - Say what you want about Paul Ryan's politics; even Democrats in Congress struggle to find a negative word to say about him.

At least, that's what Republicans have been arguing for the last two weeks.

And when it comes to the American public, it appears to be true.

A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll asked Americans to say what one word comes to mind when they think about the GOP vice presidential nominee. And people have a hard time finding negative things to say about him.

None of the top nine words people use to describe Ryan are are negative, and six of the nine are positive ("intelligent," "good," "energetic," "honest," etc.).

Not until you get to the 10th- and 11th-most-cited words do Democrats' attempts to define Ryan begin to register. That's the point at which people start describing Ryan as an "idiot" and "extremist."

And of the top 27 most-cited words, twice as many are positive - 16 - as negative - eight.

All of this from a guy who starts out with positive marks, though not overwhelmingly so. In fact, the positive words used to describe Ryan suggest a politician whose favorable rating is far better than it currently is.

In other words, it seems clear that many people have processed positive GOP messages about his intellect and his life story.

More than anything, though, it shows that Democratic attacks have yet to really sink in. Respondents actually offered nearly as many negative words as positive words, but the negative reviews are far more diffuse. Most negative words were only mentioned a handful of times, with little consensus on what's bad about Ryan.

If Democrats' efforts to label Ryan as an extremist who wants to end Medicare were really catching on, we would be seeing "extreme" and "Medicare" up higher. (In fact, "Medicare" wasn't even mentioned.)

As Ryan gets ready to take the stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, Republican efforts to make sure people know Ryan is a serious and respected politician and person seem to have registered more than Democratic attacks on his record.

People still have bad things to say about him, but the picture Democrats drew of an extreme Medicare terminator is hardly the prevailing view of Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick.

Schweikert, Gosar are victorious:Rep. David Schweikert (R) defeated fellow freshman Republican Rep. Ben Quayle in Arizona's 6thdistrict. The two matched up after redistricting shuffled the districts in the Phoenix suburbs.

Over in the western 4th district, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar survived a challenge from state Sen. Ron Gould, who was backed by the Club For Growth. With about three quarters ofprecinctsreporting, Gosar led by 19 points.

In Oklahoma's 2nd district, Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the early frontrunner to replace retiring Rep. Dan Boren (D) in a conservative-leaning district. Mullin won his runoff Tuesday and will face Democrat Rob Wallace in November.

And in Arizona's open GOP Senate primary, businessmanWil Cardon was no match for the favorite, Rep. Jeff Flake, who cruised to victory with roughly 70 percent of the vote Tuesday. Next up for Flake: Democratic nominee Richard Carmona, the former surgeon general who wasrecruitedbyPresidentObama to run.

Fixbits:

In total, Romney won more than 90 percent of the delegates who cast votes Tuesday.

Romney's favorable rating dips a little in advance of the GOP convention.

A newUSA Today/Gallup pollfinds Ann Romney's favorable rating is 42 percent, compared to 24 percent unfavorable.

CNN was the only cable news network to cut away to Hurricane Isaac coverage on Tuesday night.

Ron Paul still won't commit to voting for Romney.

Mike Huckabee compares Romney to a surgeon who is a jerk.

Univision, which has tangled with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), says on its official Facebook account that he's less Latino and less talented than Jeb Bush.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is rolling back ad buys in Missouri and New Mexico and going big in North Dakota, according to Politico.

Washington Democratic governor candidate and former congressman Jay Inslee admits making a mistake on his taxes.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) will seek reelection to his current postin 2014 after losing the GOP nomination for Senate. It would be his fourth term.

Former senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) is again battling cancer.

Must-reads:

"House Republicans Deemed Not Ready for Prime Time" - Jonathan Weisman, New York Times

"Obama Courts the Votes of a Less-Engaged Youth" - Jackie Calmes, New York Times

"Texas redistricting discriminates against minorities, federal court says" - Robert Barnes, Washington Post

"Ryans campaign strategy bolstered by longtime advisers, some of them his friends" - Felicia Sonmez, Washington Post

Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



989 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fact Checker


September 9, 2012 Sunday 5:52 PM EST


Fact checking the GOP Convention's opening night;
Old debunked claims get a new airing.


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


LENGTH: 1170 words


"I can tell you Mitt Romney was not handed success. He built it."

- Ann Romney, Aug. 28, 2012

Can an entire convention be built around a grammatical error?

We wondered about that as we watched the first night of the Republican Convention. From House Speaker John A. Boehner to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to Ann Romney, speaker after speaker made reference to Obama's statement that "If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

When Ann Romney declared that her husband "was not handed success - he built it," the delegates even began chanting "We built it" - which in fact was the official theme for the convention on Tuesday. As our former colleague Peter Baker tweeted, "If Obama had a nickel for every time a Republican quoted his "didn't build it" line, that would take care of the whole national debt problem."

We originally gave Romney's use of the phrase Three Pinocchios, a ruling that did not seem to please anyone, with Democrats complaining that Obama's words were clearly taken out of context and Republicans arguing that even in context, his words exposed a philosophy that was deeply suspicious of - even hostile to - the private sector.

As we have often said, a gaffe can become an effective attack when it reinforces an existing stereotype about a politician. Democrats would have a stronger case for a complaint if they did not also yesterday release twovideos that made ample use of gaffes by Romney that reinforced the stereotype of the GOP nominee being an uncaring corporate executive.

For readers who have not read Obama's remarks in full context, here is the complete quote. It is often truncated in campaign ads

"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me - because they want to give something back. They know they didn't - look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something - there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

As part of our fact-check gaffe series, we also did a video examination of Obama's words:

The key question is whether "that" refers to "roads and bridges" - as the Obama campaign contends - or to a business. Yes, it's a bit of a judgment call, but the clincher for us was Obama's concluding line: "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

Obama appears to be making the unremarkable point that companies and entrepreneurs often benefit in some way from taxpayer support for roads, education and so forth. In other words, he is trying to make the case for higher taxes, and for why he believes the rich should pay more, which as we noted is part of a long Democratic tradition. He just did not put it very eloquently. So we believed Three Pinocchios was a reasonable compromise, given the ungrammatical nature of Obama's phrasing.

However, in light of the GOP's repeated misuse of this Obama quote in speech after speech, we feel compelled to increase the Pinocchio rating to Four. (Warning to Democrats: You will get the same scrutiny of out-of-context Romney quotes next week. It's really a silly thing on which to base a campaign.)

***

Another misguided assertion on the first night was the Four-Pinocchio claim that President Obama waived the work requirement for welfare. Both former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former congressman Artur Davis made variations of this claim. As Santorum put it, "This summer he [Obama] showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare. I helped write the welfare reform bill; we made the law crystal clear - no president can waive the work requirement."

This is a gross simplification of a complex issue. As we wrote in our original column on this issue, the Obama administration certainly appears to have committed a process foul in the way that it said it would consider waivers for worker participation targets, made in response to a request from GOP and Democratic governors. Santorum would be correct to suggest there is something fishy about the administration's legal reasoning. But one cannot make the rhetorical leap that Santorum does and conclude that this means that Obama believes in government handouts and dependency.

There has been no dispute among fact checkers on this question, with PolitiFact awarding the claim "Pants on Fire" and FactCheck.org also saying it was incorrect. Interestingly, Romney pollster Neal Newhouse dismissed the complaints of fact-checking organizations after a Romney ad executive said that an ad based on this assertion was "our most effective ad."

"Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," he told BuzzFeed.

We know readers will forever question our "thoughts and beliefs" - pick a day and we are either tagged as a liberal or conservative, depending on whose ox is being gored that morning. But the Romney campaign would have a stronger case for ignoring fact checkers if it did not repeatedly cite our work in TV advertisements and news releases. See, for instance, this ad:

Meanwhile, this release from last month, "The Obama Campaign's Top Ten Lies & Exaggerations," is based almost entirely on citations of fact-checking organizations, including seven of this column, nine of FactCheck.Org and four of PolitiFact.

The Romney campaign may not want to be dictated by fact checkers, but campaign officials certainly like to quote us when it serves their purposes. It was ever thus.

(NOTE TO READERS: All this week, and next, we will keep an ear out for suspect facts uttered at the conventions. We suspect many will be previously debunked claims, as on the RNC's opening night, but we welcome suggestions for claims to check.)

(About our rating scale)

Check out our candidate Pinocchio Tracker

Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on Facebook .

Track each presidential candidate's campaign ads

Read our biggest Pinocchios

Full convention coverage: The Convention Grid


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



990 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 9, 2012 Sunday 3:59 AM EST


Mitt Romney: Bill Clinton 'did elevate' Democratic convention;
In his first "Meet The Press" interview since 2009, the GOP presidential nominee praised Bill Clinton's convention address, but also appeared to suggest it might have worked against the president.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 361 words


In an interview with NBC's "Meet The Press" set to air on Sunday morning, Mitt Romney said former President Bill Clinton elevated the Democratic National Convention and suggested the contrast between Clinton and other convention speakers might have worked against President Obama.

"He did stand out in contrast with the other speakers," Romney said of Clinton in the interview, according to excerpts released by NBC News on Saturday. "I think he really did elevate the Democrat convention in a lot of ways. And frankly, the contrast may not have been as - as attractive as Barack Obama might have preferred if he were choosing who'd go before him and who'd go after."

Clinton spoke on Wednesday night at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, delivering a 48-minute address that was roughly 10 minutes longer than than the president's Thursday night speech. Asked if Clinton could be elected president today, Romney responded: "You know, if the constitution weren't in his way, perhaps. But I don't know the answer to that."

The day after Clinton's speech, Romneyreleased a TV ad that sought to play Clinton against Obama. The ad pointed to comments Clinton made during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, in which he cast doubt on Obama's claim that he consistentlyopposed the war in Iraq.

Clintonwill campaign for Obama in Florida and Ohio next week.

"Meet The Press" host David Gregory spoke with Romney over of two days this week, and also interviewed Ann Romney. It's the first time since 2009 that Mitt Romney has sat for an interview with the Sunday news program.

In the interview, Romney also said he wants to "maintain defense spending at the current level of the GDP" and that Republican leaders and thepresidentwere wrong to agree to defense spending cuts that were part of last year's deal to raise the debt limit.

"I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it," Romney said.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



991 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
The Fix


September 9, 2012 Sunday 3:24 AM EST


Obama's approval rating hits highest point since killing of Osama bin Laden, poll shows;
Gallup Daily tracking data show the president's approval rating is 52 percent.


BYLINE: Sean Sullivan


LENGTH: 465 words


Make sure to sign up to receiveAfternoon Fixevery day in your e-mail inbox by 5(ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

What would prompt Todd Akin to end his Senate campaign?

The 10 biggest surprises of the conventions

How President Obamas acceptance speech stacked up in 1 chart

Jobs report is more bad news for Obama

Joe Kennedy III sails to primary win

Obama gets defensive

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* Gallup Daily tracking data released Friday show President Obama's approval rating is 52 percent, the highest it has been since May 2011, after the killing of Osama bin Laden. The latest approval rating figure is a rolling average from interviews conducted Tuesday through Thursday of this week so mostly before Obama gave his convention address.

* Former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter is fightingnon-Hodgkins lymphoma. Specter, who has survived Hodgkin's disease, has been released from a Philadelphia hospital but was expected to go back for more treatment. "Its another battle I intend to win, Specter said.

* Independent former governor Angus Kingis up with his first TV adin the Maine Senate race. The spot says he is "as independent as Maine" and can shake up Washington. King is a heavy favorite in the three-way open seat race.

* Ana Alliegro, a witness in the federalinvestigationof Rep. DavidRivera(R-Fla.), did not not show up for an interview with prosecutors and federal agents, and her family is worried about her whereabouts. Alliegro is the former campaign manager for Justin Lamar Sternad, a Democrat whounsuccessfullychallenged Joe Garcia in the Democratic primary campaign for the chance to face Rivera. Federalinvestigatorsarelookinginto whether Rivera helped fund Sternad's bid.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T MISS:

* In an interview with Iowa's KWQC, Ann Romney wouldn't answer questions about birth control and gay marriage. "Im not going to talk about the specific issues, she said when asked about lesbian parents.

*Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has released a newTV adtouting his work spearheading a measure to stop insider trading in Congress. The ad features footage of Obama shaking Brown's hand after signing the bill.

* So when exactly did Clint Eastwood decide to use an empty chair to help portray a conversation with Obama during his speech at theRepublicanNationalConvention? In hisfirst interview about the speech, Eastwood revealed that he thought of the idea when he was backstage waiting to speak.

* Paul Ryan (Wis.) will make his Sunday show debut as theRepublican vice presidential nominee this weekend, with appearances on CBSs Face The Nation and ABCs This Week With George Stephanopoulos."

THE FIX MIX:

Hey, 2015 is just around the corner.

With Aaron Blake


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



992 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Suburban Edition


Romney bailout charge is Biden baloney


BYLINE: Glenn Kessler


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A02


LENGTH: 945 words


"Let me quote from a recent article. Quote, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout, end of quote, when Bain Consulting was on the verge of collapse. The way Bain Consulting reorganized cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million. Now, imagine that. It was one thing when a million middle-class jobs were on the line. It was another thing when his own financial interests and those of his partners are on the line."

- Vice President Biden, Lordstown, Ohio, Aug. 31

When we first looked at this issue, we noted that the Obama campaign had very carefully and cleverly avoided saying directly that Mitt Romney obtained a taxpayer-funded bailout when he led a rescue of his old consulting firm, Bain & Co.

But now Vice President Biden, seizing on a new report in Rolling Stone magazine, has dropped all pretense and declared that the deal "cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million."

This issue briefly flared up during the Republican primary season, when former House speaker Newt Gingrich raised it, so let's see what really happened.

The Facts

First, Bain & Co. is not the same thing as Bain Capital, the private equity firm from which Romney made his fortune. Bain Capital is a spinoff from Bain & Co., which is a traditional consulting firm. But in the early 1990s, Bain & Co. overextended itself after an ill-advised decision in 1985-1986 by the firm's eight founding partners to take $200 million out of the firm, for themselves, with borrowed money. (Romney, who had left in 1984, was not a founder.)

In 1990, Romney was brought in to fix things. He certainly had a stake in the outcome, in part because the Bain brand name would be damaged by a bankruptcy and because Bain & Co. partners were investors in Bain Capital.

According to the book by Boston Globe reporters, "The Real Romney," Romney drove a hard bargain with the firm's creditors but especially with his former colleagues: "He was toughest when it came to negotiation with the partners at Bain & Company. He told the founding partners they had to give up about $100 million, or half the money they'd been planning to take out of the firm."

Other lenders accepted 80 cents on the dollar, realizing that a default would leave them with even less.

Meanwhile, Bain & Co. also owed $38 million to the Bank of New England. But the Bank of New England had made many bad loans, and by early 1991 it had been seized by the federal government. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sold the bank to Fleet Financial, a Rhode Island bank, and a Fleet subsidiary was tasked with trying to collect on the outstanding loans.

After months of negotiations, the outstanding loan was reduced by $10 million, including forgone interest.

The FDIC deals with this problem constantly when it seizes banks, figuring out how it can get the most money out of distressed loans. Changing the terms or reducing the loan is fairly typical, as the FDIC indicates in its Guide to Bank Failure.

The FDIC's Resolution Handbook also says (page 80):

"Restructuring a loan for a financially distressed borrower is normally more productive for the receiver than foreclosing on the collateral or initiating lawsuits to collect the debt. Maximizing recovery on failed institution assets is the receiver's responsibility, and litigation expenses can very rapidly consume any funds recovered."

The FDIC tries to collect as much as possible, but ultimately has to make good on deposits at least up to $250,000. (In the Bank of New England case, the limit was $100,000 at the time, but the agency decided to guarantee all deposits.) But any shortfall is made up through assessments made on FDIC-member banks.

That's right - no taxpayer money is involved. The FDIC prides itself on not taking taxpayer funds.

So does this qualify as a "bailout"? The dictionary definition of bailout refers to "rescue from financial distress." By that standard, some of the Bain Capital deals so heavily criticized by the Obama campaign, such as Ampad and GS Industries, might qualify as "bailouts." A more proper term - the one used by the FDIC - is "loan restructuring."

The Rolling Stone article cited by Biden, headlined "The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney," has one new element - documents from the FDIC that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents are certainly interesting, demonstrating some of Romney's hardball tactics to obtain a favorable outcome, including threatening to drain the company's cash position by paying out bonuses if a deal was not reached.

But though Rolling Stone repeatedly uses the phrase "bailout," as we explained above, this did not involve taxpayer funds or government funds.

The Rolling Stone article concedes this point: "While taxpayers did not finance the bailout, the debt forgiven by the government was booked as a loss to the FDIC - and then recouped through higher insurance premiums from banks."

The article argues that because such fees typically are passed on by banks to consumers, then the American people "ultimately" paid for the loan reduction. That is certainly an interesting argument, but it's not the same thing as "the government and American taxpayers."

The Pinocchio Test

Biden should have read the Rolling Stone article more carefully before citing it in a campaign speech. We had previously said the use of the term "bailout" was a stretch, worthy of a Pinocchio, but the vice president takes it to a new level by claiming Romney "cost the government and American taxpayers $10 million." No matter how you parse it, that's simply not correct.

Three Pinocchios

kesslerg@washpost.com

Read more Fact Checker columns at washingtonpost.com/factchecker.


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



993 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 9, 2012 Sunday
Every Edition


The candidates' message: I might be so-so, but the other guy is terrible The candidates' message: I might be so-so, but the other guy is terrible


BYLINE: Drew Westen


SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B01


LENGTH: 2312 words


Four stories are at the heart of any campaign. If you understand them, you know who controls the message - and with it, perhaps the election. These stories make up what campaign strategists call the "message grid," which has four quadrants. The first two comprise the positive stories the candidates are telling about themselves; the other two feature the negative stories each candidate is telling about the other.

In some elections, one quadrant of the grid dominates the conversation - for example, when the economy or a candidate is particularly strong or weak. Campaigns jostle for position on the grid, trying to emphasize the stories they prefer and to alter elements of the stories their opponents are effectively telling. In 2008, the stars were aligned for a new and exciting candidate to tell a story about hope and change after eight years of fear and loathing, skillfully turning his "different-ness" into an asset.

But 2012 is not 2008. This year, the stories President Obamaand Mitt Romneycan tell about themselves are just not that compelling. In contrast, the stories they have to tell about each other are far more powerful. As we put the theater of the conventions behind us and move into the homestretch of the campaign, that simple fact - along with the omnipresence of outside groups flush with unchecked money and unchecked facts - means we can expect the nastiest two months of attack ads in modern American history.

The stories in the first two quadrants, the positive ones the candidates tell about themselves, are usually the stuff of biography ads, warm-and-fuzzy convention videos and "humanizing" testimonials from spouses and elderly parents. These stories seek to establish a relationship with voters, leaving them with the sense that the candidate shares their values, understands people like them and is the right person for the times.

The best of these stories weave together a candidate's life and values with the lives and values of everyday people. In 1992, when Americans were anxious about a faltering economy, Bill Clinton stepped in as the "man from Hope." His life story - a poor boy from a small town in Arkansas whose father died in a car accident before he was born but who made good despite adversity - suggested that anyone could make it in America.

Yet stories in this positive space don't have to be so personal to be effective. Ronald Reagannever focused strongly on his life history. But the tale his reelection campaign told in his "Morning in America" ad - of a nation that was moving again, strong again and proud again - was one of the most powerful in recent memory. Like Clinton's story, it provided the kind of hope and enthusiasm that captivates an electorate, and the positive emotion that propels a campaign forward.

The stories in the remaining two quadrants in the grid are less inspiring but just as important. They reinforce or supply voters' anxieties or misgivings about an opposing candidate, motivators that can be just as potent as enthusiasm and hope. We often associate these negative stories with the underbelly of politics - as when associates of George H.W. Bush used racial politics against Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988 with the infamous "Willie Horton" ad, which told the story of a convicted black murderer who raped a white woman while out of prison on a furlough program approved by Dukakis.

As much as we may think of the first two quadrants as the "good" ones, and the last two as negative and destructive, retelling your opponent's story to stoke voters' negative emotions can be essential to an effective - and ethical - political campaign. In 2008, for example, the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, pulled ahead of Obama for the first time at the beginning of September, in part because Obama sought to run almost entirely in one quadrant of the grid - telling his own story and rarely mentioning the name of his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Although that might seem virtuous, it would probably have seemed less so if McCain had won the election and continued many of the policies that destroyed the economy. Not until Obama and his allies went negative and began painting his opponent as "McSame as Bush" did Obama pull back ahead, where he'd stay through Election Day.

In the 2012 race, the big themes and stories of the campaign have already become clear. In these final eight weeks of campaigning andadvertising, and during the presidential and vice presidential debates, we will see both campaigns relentlessly hammering home their central stories in the message grid:

Obama on Obama

Over the past few months, as the Occupy movement brought debates over inequality and "the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent" into the national conversation, Obama has recast himself as a populist, emphasizing that he stands with the middle class, whereas Romney stands on it. This is a smart strategy. It frames the election as a choice, not a referendum on an economy that remains bleak nearly four years into Obama's presidency. It also brings him back into what has been the mainstream of Democratic values ever since Franklin Roosevelt remade the Democrats as the party of working- and middle-class families. And it capitalizes on the populist rage that has energized the tea party movement since 2010, an anger that Democrats allowed Republicans to own.

But Obama has to walk a tightrope in telling this story, one he didn't face in 2008, when in many ways the very fact of his candidacy was the story. Although he wants to emphasize the progress we've made since the Great Recession bequeathed to him by Bush and the Republicans, most Americans remain stressed to the breaking point and pessimistic after years of struggle. They aren't buying any message suggesting that happy days are here again. With unemployment standing stubbornly above 8 percent, this is not a year when an incumbent wants to run on his economic achievements. The best summary Obama has of his accomplishments - domestic and international - is one that sticks: General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead. That says it all.

Romney on Romney

While Obama has probably done as well he can with a relatively weak story about himself, Romney has proved far worse at conveying a positive story, even when he has one to tell. The story he wants to tell is that, as a successful businessman, he gets how the economy works and how to create jobs; that unlike Obama, who has had nearly four years to repair a failing economy, Romney understands how to get America working again. This is a strong story to offer voters desperate to hear that someone knows how to put an end to their daily struggles.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the vice presidential nominee, argued persuasively at the Republican convention that Americans generally view business success as something to celebrate, not attack. By extolling his business and management experience, Romney is suggesting an analogy, one most Americans believe, between running a business and running a government.

Like Obama's, however, Romney's narrative is fraught with dangers. First and foremost, while Americans are generally friendly to business, that friendship is strained after years of outsourcing, skyrocketing executive compensation coupled with plummeting wages for workers, and outrage that big business is writing the rules in Washington. Second, Romney shouldn't need to liken executive experience in business with executive experience in government. As the former head of Bain Capital and the former governor of Massachusetts, he already has both. He's also run a public-private partnership, the Olympics, and Americans across the political spectrum want to see government and business working together to foster prosperity.

But to win the Republican nomination, he had to hide his record as a moderate leader of a progressive state and disavow his signature achievement as governor: a health-care plan that in many respects was the prototype for Obamacare. That's why we've heard so little in Romney's "positive" story about his years in public service.

What should be clear is that both candidates are holding very weak hands when it comes to the first two quadrants of the message grid of 2012. The best Obama can say is, "It could have been worse." And the best Romney can say is, "It could have been Newt."

Obama on Romney

Obama's story about his opponent is borrowed from the one Sen. Ted Kennedy offered in his 1994 Senate race against Romney and from the one Newt Gingrich retold so well during the GOP primaries: that Romney is a "vulture capitalist," a man whose idea of a successful business model is to pick at the carcasses of moribund companies or to turn healthy companies that hire Americans into tottering ones that lay them off. According to this story, Romney understands employment so well because he knows how to end it - or ship it overseas.

"Now you have a choice," Obama told the Democratic convention during his speech accepting the party's nomination. "We can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America."

In part because Team Obama has made the case so effectively, and in part because Romney and his strategists seem to have the instincts of political animals that long ago went extinct, Obama has succeeded in making this the central story of the campaign - far more central than his story about himself. If he is able to keep this up, he is headed for reelection.

He has offered other stories as well, describing Romney as a flip-flopper who has been on every side of every issue, and even pulling out the brilliant line used by Kennedy against his Senate rival: Whereas Kennedy was pro-choice, Romney was multiple-choice. The president's campaign has also used Romney's pandering to the right wing of his party on social issues to paint him as an extremist leading a party of misogynists.

Romney on Obama 

Only at the GOP convention did Romney really begin articulating the story he should have been telling from the start. Obama has made the election a referendum on his challenger, a great strategy in tough economic times. But Romney's message is that the president has had four years to fix the economy, and he just can't do it. Although he and Ryan didn't always get their facts straight, they did get their stories straight: that more than 20 million Americans still can't find full-time work or any work at all, and that their kids need to be able to stay on their parents' health insurance until they're 26 because so many of them can't find jobs.

"This president can ask us to be patient," Romney said during his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination. "This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. This president can tell us that the next four years, he'll get it right. But this president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office."

If there's a message that can defeat Obama, this is it. It not only strikes at the president's greatest point of vulnerability, it creates a link between Romney and the icon of the conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, who used the "Are you better off?" line so potently against Jimmy Carter. It also resonates with the two-thirds of Americans who believe that the country is on the wrong track.In his brilliant address to the Democratic convention Wednesday, Bill Clinton defused this attack, stating categorically that neither he nor any of his predecessors could have fixed such a broken economy in four years. But I suspect that most Americans were less convinced that someone with a clearer vision and greater capacity to lead couldn't do better. Whether Romney fits that description is the key question for undecided voters.

These are the stories we can expect to hear for the next two months. If this campaign hasn't focused enough on the negative quadrants of the grid already, we can expect unbridled negativity from here on out. Sure, we'll hear ads attempting to "humanize" Romney or emphasize the accomplishments of a president whose campaign of hope and change in 2008 has morphed into a campaign of search and destroy. But between a blitz of attack ads courtesy of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, and a citizenry that is anything but united, we're going to see only half a grid - the negative half.

The prospect of an unrelenting campaign of negativity - and the very notion of the message grid - is not an accident of American politics. It capitalizes on a counterintuitive fact about the human brain, one that psychologists and neuroscientists understand as well as the best political strategist: Positive and negative feelings are not just opposites. The neural circuitry that produces feelings such as enthusiasm and disgust is almost entirely distinct. Nothing in our brains prevents us from associating diametrically opposite feelings with the same person - a point driven home by polls showing that most voters find Obama more likable than Romney but feel more favorably about Romney's capacity to handle the economy.

The implications for our politics are profound. The ads or stories that drive up one candidate's positives may not be the same ads or stories that drive up the opposing candidate's negatives. And you don't win an election with half a brain.

outlook@washpost.com

Drew Westen is a professor of psychology at Emory University and founder of Westen Strategies. He is the author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation" and the forthcoming "What's Left?"

Read more from Outlook:

If Obama loses the election, here's why

Both Obama and Romney would bear the burdens of health-care reform

Remember the war in Afghanistan? Obama and Romney don't seem to.

Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.


LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



994 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 8, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Race Is On In Earnest As Candidates Hit the Road


BYLINE: By JEREMY W. PETERS and HELENE COOPER; Jeremy W. Peters reported from Sioux City, Iowa, and Helene Cooper from Iowa City.


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; Pg. 9


LENGTH: 995 words


SIOUX CITY, Iowa -- Mitt Romney's plane touched down here on Friday, and with it arrived the beginning of what is expected to be the most expensive and intense political advertising war ever.

The Romney campaign has unleashed its first barrage of commercials in Iowa and seven other battleground states, a narrowly targeted effort that underscores just how much money will flood so few states in such a small amount of time. It also presents a challenge to the Obama campaign, which will be at a financial disadvantage. Mr. Romney will spend $4.8 million for just four days of advertising.

In Iowa -- and in a handful of states from Colorado and Nevada in the West to New Hampshire and Virginia in the East -- the next two months before Election Day will be a blur of television, radio and Internet ads, campaign rallies and endless unsolicited phone calls.

Friday, the first real day of general election campaigning, offered a preview of what the race will look like over the next few weeks -- in all its relentlessness and fury.

As the morning newscasts were getting under way with coverage of both Mr. Obama's speech to the Democratic convention on Thursday night, and the release of new, disappointing jobs numbers, the Romney campaign put its ads on the air.

They hammer the president with a line of attack that Mr. Romney has started making more forcefully in recent days: that Mr. Obama's policies have failed to make the country better off than it was four years ago, despite what he and his allies might say.

For his part, with the convention over Mr. Obama wasted no time crisscrossing the country. He and Mr. Romney campaigned just hours apart in Iowa and New Hampshire. Then the president left for Florida, where he is going on a bus tour this weekend.

Mr. Obama alluded to his financial disadvantage while campaigning in Portsmouth, N.H., with his wife, Michelle, and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill.

''You can't give up on the idea that your vote makes a difference,'' Mr. Obama told the crowd. ''Because if you do give up then the lobbyists and the special interests, they'll fill the void: The folks who are writing the $10 million checks, the folks running all these super PAC ads.''

Mr. Obama also took some swipes at Mr. Romney and Republicans, saying their criticisms of him were merely a diversion because they lacked a plan of their own.

''They want your vote, but they don't want to show you their plan,'' he said. ''That's because all they've got to offer is the same prescriptions that they've had for the last 30 years -- tax cuts, tax cuts, gut some regulations, oh, and more tax cuts. Tax cuts when times are good; tax cuts when times are bad. Tax cuts to help you lose a few extra pounds. Tax cuts to improve your love life. It will cure anything, according to them.''

Mr. Romney's campaign released 15 new ads in all, each focused on a specific state and the issues most likely to resonate with voters there.

In Florida, for example, people will see commercials about falling real estate values and high foreclosure rates. In Colorado, where the military and its contractors are large employers, people will be told that the president's budget cuts could cost 20,000 military jobs there.

And here in Iowa, ads will tell voters how ''excessive government regulations are crushing small businesses and family farms.''

Despite the differing messages, the ads open with the same clip from Mr. Romney's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. ''This president cannot tell us that you're better off today than when he took office,'' he is shown saying.

The other states where the ads will run until Tuesday -- when both candidates have agreed to suspend their advertising for the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks -- are Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.

The ads will help Mr. Romney keep pace on the air with Mr. Obama, who spent close to $50 million on television commercials in the last month alone.

Though Republican ''super PACs'' gave him cover by showing their own ads during the summer, Mr. Romney was limited by campaign finance regulations from spending his $185 million war chest on advertising until he officially became the nominee.

For the first time, Mr. Obama will be at a direct spending disadvantage compared with Mr. Romney. As of the most recent reporting period, which counted campaign account totals through the end of July, Mr. Obama had about $60 million less cash on hand than his Republican rival.

And the super PAC that supports him, Priorities USA Action, has failed to raise money at the same levels as its Republican counterparts, which will continue to inundate the airwaves with ads.

American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists, started a new $6.6 million advertising campaign this week with an ad that mocks the president's campaign slogan, ''Forward.''

''President Obama says he'll move us forward. But where's he taken us so far?'' asks an announcer before giving a list of grim economic statistics.

The different targets of the candidates' ad campaigns show how a race this tight could turn on any number of issues or demographics.

Both campaigns have pursued carefully focused advertising strategies, said Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.

''Obama's advertising has targeted by demographic: lots of ads aimed at Latinos, women, with ads about abortion-related issues, young people with ads about the cost of education, etc.,'' she said. ''Romney's advertising is geo-targeting with economic issues: housing in Florida, manufacturing in Ohio. And it's a reflection of the broader situation. In a nutshell, the economy favors Romney. The demographics favor Obama.''

PHOTO: Mitt Romney at a rally on Friday at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. With the conventions over, he and President Obama stepped up their campaigns. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL APPLETON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A10)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/us/politics/obama-and-romney-conventions-over-hit-the-road.html


LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



995 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 8, 2012 Saturday
Late Edition - Final


Conventions Draw Crowds but Sway Few Voters


BYLINE: By ADAM NAGOURNEY


SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Politics; POLITICAL MEMO; Pg. 9


LENGTH: 1151 words


CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The goal of the Democratic convention was to draw a sharp contrast between the visions offered by President Obama and Mitt Romney, promote a first-term record that many Democrats feel Mr. Obama has failed to articulate and persuade nervous Americans to stick with this president through tough times.

For Republicans, the goal of their convention was to flesh out a candidate who had been caricatured as bloodless, portray Mr. Obama as out of his depth and make voters who supported Mr. Obama in 2008 comfortable with leaving him in November for a lesser-known opponent.

As Democrats left here on Friday, the emerging consensus was that Mr. Obama had gone further in meeting the goals.

But even as the grading begins, the overriding question might be how much these conventions mattered. There is growing evidence that this year more than ever, the political significance of these extravagant and costly events was on the decline, just another in an ever-growing vortex of forces that help shape the election.

''There was a day where these conventions were covered much more intensively, there was less to watch on TV and voters were more open,'' said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. ''But now, by the time the conventions took place, 90 percent of voters are locked in.''

Mr. Axelrod said the conventions had become ''much more marginal than they once were'' and were now much less about reaching undecided voters, since so few watch, and more of a pep rally to motivate the base. That is no small thing, he said, but certainly far short of the significance that conventions once held.

Stuart Stevens, Mr. Axelrod's counterpart in the Romney campaign, said conventions offered the party a platform to make its case but long ago lost their potential to ''slingshot you forward.''

''One thing about this race that I kept muttering about even before the conventions is that more ads have been run this year before the convention even started than were run in all of '08,'' Mr. Stevens said.

When measured by viewership and the number of prime-time hours that the networks devote to them, the conventions have been on the wane since the days when there were actually contested battles on the floor for the nomination. But changes in campaigns over the past four years have hastened their slide.

Voters in swing states have already been inundated with months of commercials from the Obama campaign, which decided to start advertising early, and from independent committees supporting Mr. Romney, not to mention 24-hour cable news coverage, delivered with a partisan tone by some networks.

After all that, there is little in the conventions, which themselves resemble elongated advertisements, to draw viewers' interest or provide them with information that could sway their opinions.

Since 2004, conventions have taken place later in the season, and the practice of separating them by a few weeks has long fallen by the wayside. That created a 10-day blur of convention coverage, challenging campaign officials who are looking for some way to break through. And by Labor Day, the holiday that separated the two conventions this year, voters are much further along the decision-making track and, particularly in swing states, are awash in information about the candidates.

''I think they have absolutely no impact on election results whatsoever,'' said Allan J. Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington. ''And people are catching on these conventions don't matter. They are just daylong infomercials. People are beginning to realize that.''

Chris Lehane, who helped oversee the 2000 Democratic convention for Al Gore, said candidates had not experienced any real lift in polls from these gatherings at least since 2004.

''The conventions are watched by far less people, and the press covers them in a far more critical and skeptical fashion,'' Mr. Lehane said. ''They are akin to a political appendix. They exist but do not serve the purpose they were originally created to serve, which was to truly nominate the ticket.''

There is a very narrow band of voters who might genuinely be open to argument. But officials with both campaigns said they were concerned that the television audience was made up overwhelmingly of friendly crowds looking to cheer on their team: Republicans tuned in last week, and Democrats this week.

More than anything, given the fire hydrant spray of information hitting voters from so many different sources, the half-life of even the biggest events is diminishing. (Quick: What was the theme of Mr. Romney's acceptance speech last week?)

The discussion over whether former President Bill Clinton had bested Mr. Obama with his speech flared just before midnight on Thursday and was gone by Friday morning, as attention turned to the latest round of employment figures. And all that free advertising that Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama enjoyed at their conventions is already being overwhelmed by the tidal wave of campaign advertising by Mr. Romney, coinciding with the start of the general election campaign.

This is not to say that conventions have become complete relics. More than 35 million people watched Mr. Obama's speech, and 30 million watched Mr. Romney, according to Nielsen ratings; all three networks showed the speeches. That is one of the largest audiences that the two men will get during this campaign, and Mr. Axelrod said he presumed that at least some of the viewers had not made up their minds.

And the reception inside the hall was just as important, he said. Rallying the party is critical in a year like this.

Even some Republicans said Mr. Obama's camp produced the more effective convention, with greater enthusiasm, more memorable speeches and fewer mishaps.

''The Democrats did a far better job at their convention than the Republicans, with everything, which is unusual, because usually the Republicans did that stuff better,'' said Matthew Dowd, who was the strategist in the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.

''The Republican convention in every way felt old and backward,'' he said. ''The Democratic convention at least felt as if it was in the 21st century.''

Conventions are also a fair measure of basic campaign competence. Even the best-planned convention is going to have some problems, and there was no exception here.

Mr. Obama had to intervene to end an embarrassing platform fight over recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. And the dominant memory of the Republican convention might not have been the speech by Mr. Romney, but rather the image of an actor arguing with an empty chair on the stage.

You do remember that, right?

PHOTO: The close of the Republican National Convention last week. Most voters have already made up their minds, and there is an ever-growing vortex of forces that help shape the election amid the 24-hour news cycle. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES)


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/us/politics/conventions-draw-crowds-but-sway-few-voters.html


LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



996 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times


September 8, 2012 Saturday
The New York Times on the Web


4 Years After Starry Romance, Trying to Save the Marriage


BYLINE: By ALESSANDRA STANLEY


SECTION: Section ; Column 0; National Desk; THE TV WATCH; Pg.


LENGTH: 705 words


President Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday wasn't a sweeping romantic overture, it was the cautious declaration of a chastened husband trying to save a troubled marriage. He doesn't want to lose the electorate -- he's been to couples counseling, he's learned to listen, and he knows what to say, and most of all, what not to say.

''We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system -- the greatest engine of growth and prosperity the world has ever known,'' Mr. Obama said, careful not to disparage the skeptical in-laws, or in this case, American business. Then he slipped in his real point about the role of government. ''But we also believe in something called citizenship,'' he said.

Mr. Obama didn't get down and beg in Charlotte, N.C., but he was asking for a second chance. Knowing what they know now, would voters marry him all over again?

Convention viewers are like guests at wedding, easily caught up in the starry romance of the moment even though they also know the sordid back story of the bride's old boyfriend or the groom's gambling debts. It was as true in Tampa, Fla., as it was in Charlotte, N.C.: at a wedding, the bride is always beautiful and at a convention, the nominee is always stirring.

Mr. Obama's star turn on Thursday night was not anything like that fairy-tale first wedding in Denver in 2008, when 38 million people tuned in to watch a moment so historic and transcendent that Mr. Obama's rival, John McCain, ran a campaign ad congratulating the Democratic nominee. That was a spectacle -- in an outdoor stadium, with Greek columns and fireworks -- that was the political equivalent of the royal wedding of William and Kate or at least the ''General Hospital'' wedding of Luke and Laura.

A lot has happened since Denver. ''The times have changed, and so have I,'' is how Mr. Obama put it. His speech on Thursday was closer to a vow renewing ceremony.

So it was fitting that the threat of storms pushed Mr. Obama's acceptance speech indoors, to a smaller, humbler arena.

It was a Democratic convention, so there was a lot of love in the air, but friends of the couple have overheard the spats, seen the unpaid bills, heard the broken promises and tripped over piles of unwashed laundry. Mr. Obama defended himself, but was quick to admit that he is not without blame. He described himself as ''far more mindful of my own failings,'' but didn't specify where he was at fault.

Trust isn't easy, even when Bill Clinton is the mediator.

Worst of all, there's a home-wrecker in the wings, a rich preppy who may be a little dull but drives a better car, and that suitor is working hard to bust up the relationship. Sometimes literally: a new Republican ad unveiled on Thursday shows a woman at a restaurant telling her date, a cardboard cutout of Mr. Obama, ''It's not me, it's you.''

And, unfortunately, those were very close to the actual words Mr. Obama used while trying to show some humility -- and a course correction -- after all that confident talk in 2008 about audacity and hope. ''So you see, the election four years ago wasn't about me. It was about you,'' the president said. ''My fellow citizens -- you were the change.''

The other side had its own share of problems. As Matthew Dowd, who did polling for George W. Bush, put it on ABC News, Democrats fell in love with Mr. Obama, Republicans are in an ''arranged marriage'' with Mitt Romney.

And maybe because both conventions this year looked more like a couples counseling retreat than political brokering, wedded bliss turned out be competitive sport. Ann loves Mitt, Mitt loves Ann, and Mitt loves his father, George, who loved Mitt's mother, Lenore, so much he presented with a single fresh rose every day of their 64-year marriage.

The president had his best man out there on Thursday night, and he too loved love. Joe Biden's wife Jill loves Joe, and Joe loves his ''Jilly'' -- he proposed five times before she said yes. And Barack loves Michelle and Michelle loves Barack, even more than she did four years ago.

There's nothing wrong with those misty-eyed moments and uxorious excess. But it was sometimes hard to remember that date night is on Nov. 6, not Feb. 14.


URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/us/politics/obamas-acceptance-speech-tries-to-save-the-marriage-tv-watch.html


LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company



997 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



The New York Times Blogs
(FiveThirtyEight)


September 8, 2012 Saturday


Sept. 8: Conventions May Put Obama in Front-Runner's Position


BYLINE: NATE SILVER


SECTION: US; politics


LENGTH: 2118 words



HIGHLIGHT: With President Obama having another strong day in the polls on Saturday, the question now is not whether he will get a bounce in the surveys, but how substantial it will be.


On Friday, we began to see reasonably clear signs that President Obama would receive some kind of bounce in the polls from the Democratic convention.

Mr. Obama had another strong day in the polls on Saturday, making further gains in each of four national tracking polls. The question now is not whether Mr. Obama will get a bounce in the polls, but how substantial it will be.

Some of the data, in fact, suggests that the conventions may have changed the composition of the race, making Mr. Obama a reasonably clear favorite as we enter the stretch run of the campaign.

On Saturday, Mr. Obama extended his advantage to three points from two points in the Gallup national tracking poll, and to four points from two in an online survey conducted by Ipsos. He pulled ahead of Mitt Romney by two points in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, reversing a one-point deficit in the edition of the poll published on Friday.

A fourth tracking poll, conducted online by the RAND Corporation's American Life Panel, had Mr. Obama three percentage points ahead of Mr. Romney in the survey it published early Saturday morning; the candidates had been virtually tied in the poll on Friday. (The RAND survey has an interesting methodology -- we'll explore it more in a separate post.)

The gains that Mr. Obama has made in these tracking polls over the past 48 hours already appear to match or exceed the ones that Mr. Romney made after his convention. The odds, however, are that Mr. Obama has some further room to grow.

The reason is that the tracking polls are not turned around instantaneously. The Gallup poll, for instance, now consists of interviews conducted between Saturday, Sept. 1, and Friday, Sept. 7. That means that many of the interviews in the poll still predate the effective start of the Democratic convention on Tuesday night.

That Mr. Obama has made these gains in polls that only partially reflect the Democratic convention suggests that his bounce could be more substantial once they fully do so. Mathematically, Mr. Obama has to have been running well ahead of Mr. Romney in the most recent interviews in these surveys to have made up for middling data earlier in the week.

In fact, it is possible to reverse-engineer an estimate of what Mr. Obama's numbers look like in the postconvention part of the tracking surveys. Specifically, I will be looking to infer Mr. Obama's numbers from interviews conducted after Bill Clinton's speech on Wednesday night, which in my view was the pivotal moment of the convention.

Let's use the Gallup tracking poll as an example. Mr. Obama now leads in that survey by four percentage points. Conversely, he led by one point in the version of the poll published on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of Mr. Clinton's speech. What must Mr. Obama's numbers have looked like in the interviews since the Clinton speech in order for him to make those gains?

This can be determined with a little algebra if we know what percentage of the interviews in the Gallup survey reflect post-Clinton data. Fortunately, this calculation is fairly straightforward.

Gallup's tracking poll is reported over a seven-day window, and roughly the same number of people are polled each day. The interviews Gallup conducted on Saturday, Sept. 1, and then on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, predated the Clinton speech. The interviews it conducted on Thursday and Friday post-dated it. The only day about which there is any ambiguity is Wednesday itself. But, since Mr. Clinton's speech was made late Wednesday night, only a small fraction of the respondents in the poll would have had the chance to watch it by the time that Gallup called them -- probably just the last round or so of interviews that Gallup conducted on the West Coast. (We'll assume that 20 percent of the Wednesday interviews did reflect Mr. Clinton's speech, although the fraction was probably a little lower than that in practice.)

Over all, that means that only about 30 percent of the data from the Gallup poll post-dated Mr. Clinton's remarks.

If you do the math, it implies that Mr. Obama must have been leading Mr. Romney by 10 or 11 points in the minority of the poll conducted since Mr. Clinton's speech for him to have gained three points in the survey over all.

In the table below, I've run through the same calculation for the other tracking polls. The results imply that Mr. Obama has run about nine points ahead of Mr. Romney in the portion of the Ipsos poll conducted since Mr. Clinton's speech, about eight points ahead in the RAND poll, and about four points ahead in the Rasmussen poll.

On average between the four polls, it appears that Mr. Obama must have held about an eight-point lead since Mr. Clinton's speech in order to have gained so much ground so quickly.

This method is not perfect -- the only way we would know how well Mr. Obama had been doing is if the polling firms published day-by-day results, which none of them do.

But on Friday, I wrote that Mr. Obama might eventually hold about a five-point lead over Mr. Romney once the tracking polls fully rolled over to post-convention data. Now it looks like his advantage could potentially be a bit larger than that, depending on how long the bounce holds. Despite a mediocre jobs report on Friday, there were no signs in the polls that Mr. Obama's bounce had immediately receded, as he gained further ground in the surveys that were released on Saturday.

Earlier in the week of the convention, before there was any data on the magnitude of Mr. Obama's bounce, I used a series of golf metaphors to serve as a guide to interpreting the postconvention numbers. By that nomenclature, it now appears that Mr. Obama is on track for a "birdie" convention, meaning that he would exit the conventions in a somewhat stronger position than where he entered them.

The equivalent of a par score remains a possibility if Mr. Obama's numbers cool off a bit, which they very well may, although that would be better than Mr. Romney's bogey.

But there is also the possibility of an eagle, with Mr. Obama holding as much as an eight- to nine-point lead over Mr. Romney in the polls once they fully reflect post-convention data. His polls seem to have been about that strong since Mr. Clinton's speech, at least.

Again, this is just the upside case for Mr. Obama -- not the reality yet. But the fact that it seems plausible is a bit surprising to me. Very little has moved the polls much all this year -- including Mr. Romney's convention and his choice of Paul D. Ryan as his running mate, events that typically produce bounces. But Mr. Obama has already made clear gains in the polls in surveys that only partially reflect his convention.

As surprising as it might be, however, I do not see how you can interpret it as anything other than a good sign for Mr. Obama. All elections have turning points. Perhaps Mr. Obama simply has the more persuasive pitch to voters, and the conventions were the first time when this became readily apparent.

Polls conducted after the incumbent party's convention typically inflate the standing of the incumbent by a couple of points, but not usually by more than that. Otherwise, they have predicted the eventual election outcome reasonably well.

Since 1968, the largest post-convention polling deficit that a challenger overcame to win the race was in 2000, when George W. Bush trailed Al Gore by about four points after the Democratic convention but won the Electoral College -- although Mr. Bush lost the popular vote.

And unlike Mr. Bush, who at least led in the polls after his own convention that year, Mr. Romney did not, essentially only bringing the race to a tie in polls conducted early in the week of his convention.

In fact, Mr. Romney has never held a lead over Mr. Obama by any substantive margin in the polls. The Real Clear Politics average of polls put Mr. Romney ahead by a fraction of a percentage point at one point in October 2011, and he pulled into an exact tie at one point late in the week of his convention, after it was over, but he has never done better than that.

That makes this an extremely odd election. You would figure that at some point over the past year, Mr. Romney would have pulled into the lead in the polls, given how close it has usually been. John McCain held occasional leads in 2008; John Kerry led for much of the summer in 2004; and Michael Dukakis had moments where he was well ahead of George H.W. Bush in the spring and summer of 1988. But Mr. Romney, if there have been moments when his polls were ever-so-slightly stronger or weaker, has never really had his moment in the sun.

Instead, the cases where one candidate led essentially from wire to wire have been associated with landslides: Bill Clinton in 1996, Ronald Reagan in 1984, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956.

There is almost no chance that Mr. Obama will win by those sort of margins. But this nevertheless seems like an inauspicious sign for Mr. Romney. If even at his high-water mark, he can only pull the race into a rough tie, what pitch can he come up with in October or November to suddenly put him over the top?

Conservatives sometimes cite Ronald Reagan's win in 1980 as a favorable precedent for Mr. Romney, because the polls showed him in a tight race with Jimmy Carter in October and early November, 1980. Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan had shown much clearer signs of upside potential earlier in the race -- most conspicuously, in leading Mr. Carter by nearly 30 points after the Republican convention in Detroit.

Because of demographic changes, the Republican base is probably just a bit too narrow to win the election for Mr. Romney on its own, even with a strong Republican turnout.

Certainly, Mr. Romney will win his fair share of independent voters because of the economy -- and if there are substantive signs of economic decline in October and November, probably enough to win him the election.

But unless there is some change of course, it looks increasingly as though he lacks the appeal to the voting blocks that might allow him to win 51 percent of the vote rather than 49 percent.

Mr. Romney's tenure at Bain Capital and his opposition to the auto bailouts may be a negative with the Reagan Democrats of the Midwest. His conservative stances on immigration will likely prevent him from having George W. Bush's comparative appeal among Hispanic voters. He is mostly playing defense among the so-called security moms with whom Mr. Bush performed fairly well in 2004, having largely sidestepped discussions of national security.

Highly educated voters who are moderate on social policy but conservative on fiscal policy might be a natural constituency for Mr. Romney, and they were critical to his election as governor in Massachusetts in 2002. But Mr. Romney has rarely broken from the Republican orthodoxy on social issues. By contrast, it was Democrats who were much more forthright about touting their support for abortion rights, gay rights, and less rigid immigration policy at their convention in Charlotte, N.C.

I will acknowledge that there is the risk of jumping the gun with this analysis. Our forecast model began to see Mr. Romney's subpar convention bounce as a bearish indicator for him early during his convention week. Now that Mr. Obama appears to be making gains when Mr. Romney did not, it has become more entrenched in seeing Mr. Obama as the favorite -- enough so that it now gives him almost a 4-in-5 chance of victory. Taking the temperature of voters around the party conventions is tricky: it is a period when a lot of undecided voters start to tune in for the first time, but it is also associated with volatile polling. Every election is different, and no statistical method to analyze them is beyond reproach.

But in the immediate term, it seems like the upside case for Mr. Romney is that Mr. Obama's polls cool off quickly -- and soon revert to where they were before the conventions, with Mr. Obama about two points ahead in the polling average. That's certainly a very winnable election for Mr. Romney, but nevertheless one where he is the modest underdog.

And Mr. Romney's downside case is that Mr. Obama's polling bounce will be a little stickier, and that Mr. Obama will already be fairly close to having achieved 50 percent of the vote with precious few undecided voters left in the race. That would make Mr. Romney a clear underdog -- perhaps even one who needs some foreign policy or economic crisis to intervene to give him much of a chance at winning.



LOAD-DATE: September 9, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DOCUMENT-TYPE: News


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 The News York Times Company
All Rights Reserved



998 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=33547&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washingtonpost.com


September 8, 2012 Saturday 8:12 PM EST


Obama, Romney start sprint to election


BYLINE: David A. Fahrenthold;David Nakamura


SECTION: A section; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 965 words


Two months left. Now - after a fever-dream year of caucusing and nine-nine-nine-ing and moon colonies and talking to chairs - the presidential campaign is supposed to start getting interesting. The coming weeks will bring four debates, a new avalanche of attack ads and massive efforts to turn out voters. As a distracted country begins to tune in, candidates will focus on the sliver of Americans who are political enough to vote but not so partisan that they've already decided.

On Friday, President Obama and Mitt Romney began their sprint, each appearing in multiple states. Both focused on new jobless figures, the latest signal of the dismal economy that has hung over this campaign from the start."We know it's not good enough," Obama told an audience in Portsmouth, N.H. That statement applied just as much to his candidacy as to his country. "We need to create more jobs faster."

Even now, after all that Romney and Obama have already said and done, it's likely that many of their campaigns' defining moments are still in the future. At this point in 2008, for instance, Lehman Brothers was still in business. Joe the Plumber was still just Joe, a plumber. And Obama was behind. This year, Romney is hoping that the next plot twists will favor him.

"I know there's a lot of bad news out there, but I'm looking beyond the bad news," Romney said in Orange City, Iowa, trying to project optimism about both the U.S. economy and his own campaign. "I'm looking over the hill and seeing what's going to happen just down the road just a bit. And what's going to happen is America's about to come roaring back."

This is the last lap of a race that has always been close. Obama officially began his campaign last April. Romney began his last June. Now, after 15 months, the two remain virtually tied in national polls.

Obama does have a slight lead in two of eight key swing states: Florida and New Hampshire. Obama's staff believes it has a "small but important" lead in others. But the polls show the remaining six - Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and Wisconsin - are still anybody's guess.

In the past two weeks, both parties had hoped that their elaborate conventions might finally move this election's stuck needle. Romney tried and failed: Polls showed no significant "bounce." Obama's convention ended Thursday, so it's too soon to tell whether he did better.

At this point, few voters seem to be genuinely undecided. Polls show that less than one in 10 is genuinely open to changing his or her vote. But now, two vast machines - campaigns and allied organizations with at least $1 billion to spend - will set out to change the minds they can and motivate the ones already on their side.

On Friday, Romney's campaign rolled out a $4.5 million ad buy, 15 new TV spots in eight states. "Here in [insert state name], we're not better off under President Obama," the ads said.

"This is when ordinary people, as opposed to you and I . . . really begin to pay attention," said Candice Nelson, a professor at American University. "Most people have real lives." The next key moment may be the first presidential debate, to be held Oct. 3 in Denver.

There, two highly stage-managed candidates will appear in an environment they can't control. Both have faltered in this spotlight before: This spring, Romney offered Texas Gov. Rick Perry a whopping $10,000 bet. In 2008, Obama offered rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a backhanded compliment that was mainly backhand: "You're likable enough." On Friday, however, the two campaigns remained locked in their old long-distance debate, going nowhere. Should Obama be blamed because the economy is faltering? Or should he be celebrated because it's not worse?

Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), campaigning in Nevada, argued it was the former.

Earlier in the day, a new jobs report showed that the economy added a paltry 96,000 jobs in August. The unemployment rate had declined, but for a depressing reason: More than 300,000 people stopped looking for work.

"President Obama is not a bad guy. He's good at giving great speeches. He's just really bad at creating jobs," Ryan said, as some in the crowd booed Obama's name. "If we want the next four years to be any different from the last four years, we need a new president."

Obama, in Portsmouth, argued again that he had prevented a catastrophe. He focused on the fact that any jobs had been gained at all. He said Romney was offering only tired ideas for fixing the mess.

"Tax cuts, tax cuts, gut some regulations, oh, and more tax cuts," Obama said derisively. "Tax cuts when times are good; tax cuts when times are bad. Tax cuts to help you lose a few extra pounds. Tax cuts to improve your love life. It will cure anything, according to them."

There was also something even more tired: a debate about a speech. Romney aides panned Obama's convention address on Thursday night, arguing that it fell flat in prime time.

But Obama's senior adviser, David Plouffe, countered that the speech will play well in the critical swing states and help boost voter registrations and turnout. Obama believes he "did exactly what he came to the convention to do last night," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Before Obama went on stage, Psaki said, his daughters, Malia and Sasha, reenacted a scene from the movie "Hannah Montana," in which they told him, "Go get 'em, baby," and Obama "really enjoyed that. It made him laugh, and it just kind of reminded him of what's important and what this is all about."

fahrenthold@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com

Nakamura reported from Iowa City. Nia-Malika Henderson in Orange City, Iowa; Felicia Sonmez in Sparks, Nev.; and Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



999 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=5072&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
Washington Post Blogs
Election 2012


September 8, 2012 Saturday 7:57 PM EST


In Virginia, Romney focuses on military;
GOP nominee says that Obama would make drastic cuts to the military in a second term.


BYLINE: Nia-Malika Henderson


LENGTH: 640 words


VIRGINIA BEACH - Faced with criticism from his own party for his failure to mention the troops fighting in Afghanistan during his convention speech in Tampa, Mitt Romney turned his attention Saturday to the military, warning that President Obama would make drastic cuts to the armed forces in a second term.

Speaking at the Military Aviation Museum here, Romney, who at one point broke out into the Pledge of Allegiance, said he would "rebuild American's military might" and restore proposed cuts to defense programs.

The $100 million worth of defense and non-defense cuts were part of a deal reached by the White House and House Republicans last summer to force lawmakers to rein in the national debt.

Romney has pinned the blame on Obama, citing excerpts from a new book by Bob Woodward to support his view that the proposed cuts were the president's idea.

"Our troops have been stretched to the breaking point in the conflicts they've been enduring, and our hearts go to those that are in far-off places today, particularly those in Afghanistan who are in harm's way," Romney said. "We love them, we respect them, we honor their sacrifice. But to preserve liberty, we must have a commitment not just to more ships and more aircraft, but also in my view to more members of our armed forces. I will not cut our military, I will maintain our military commitment."

Romney, who was introduced by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, met briefly before he spoke with televangelist Pat Robertson, who attended the event.

Virginia is home to about 1 million service members, veterans and their families, and Romney and Obama have both courted the crucial voting bloc.

In two weeks, Virginia voters will be able to cast early ballots, and the Romney campaign plans to focus on the economy in making its case. At 5.9 percent, the state's unemployment rate is well below the national average, yet Romney will continue to center his argument on the possibility of impending cuts to the defense industry.

Romney aides expect a tough fight over the Virginia's 13 electoral votes - the former Massachusetts governor's path to the White House is heavily dependent on this state.

"I think the key here is a lot of these middle-class voters that have been hit the hardest in the Obama economy," said Kevin Madden, a senior Romney adviser. "The ones that have a job are very anxious about keeping it, particularly those that work in the defense industry in Virginia, where their jobs could be put in jeopardy and the whole regional economy could be put in jeopardy because of the sequestration cuts, the defense sequestration cuts, that were initiated by President Obama."

Obama won Virginia in 2008, the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, by performing well among African American voters (20 percent of the voting population) and among voters under the age of 65. McCain narrowly won this county over Obama in 2008.

Romney revved up the crowd by sounding popular conservative themes and invoking God.

"For me, the Pledge of Allegiance and placing our hand over our heart reminds us of the blood that was shed by our sons and daughters fighting for our liberty and sharing liberty with people around the world," he said. "The promises that were made in that pledge are promises I plan on keeping if I'm president, and I've kept them so far in my life. The pledge says, 'under God.' I will not take God out of the name of our platform. I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart. We're a nation that's bestowed by God."

On Saturday, Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, released an ad in Virginia and five other swing states that looks at Romney's tax plan and the impact it would have on middle-class families. An independent group found that the plan could cost the average family $2,000 more in taxes each year.


LOAD-DATE: September 19, 2013


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved



1000 of 2097 DOCUMENTS



http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/attachRetrieve.do?smi=LOGOS&key=12311&componentseq=1&type=logo&inline=y
The Washington Post


September 8, 2012 Saturday
Met 2 Edition


Obama, Romney start sprint to election


BYLINE: David A. Fahrenthold;David Nakamura


SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01


LENGTH: 949 words


Two months left. Now - after a fever-dream year of caucusingand nine-nine-nine-ing and moon colonies and talking to chairs - the presidential campaign is supposed to start getting interesting.

The coming weeks will bring four debates, a new avalanche ofattack ads and massive efforts to turn out voters. As a distracted country begins to tune in, candidates will focus on the sliver of Americans who are political enough to vote but not so partisan that they've already decided.

On Friday, President Obama and Mitt Romney began their sprint, each appearing in multiple states. Both focused on new jobless figures, the latest signal of the dismal economy that has hung over this campaign from the start.

"We know it's not good enough," Obama told an audience in Portsmouth, N.H. That statement applied just as much to his candidacy as to his country. "We need to create more jobs faster."

Even now, after all that Romney and Obama have already said and done, it's likely that many of their campaigns' defining moments are still in the future. At this point in 2008, for instance,Lehman Brotherswas still in business. Joe the Plumber was still just Joe, a plumber. And Obama was behind.

This year, Romney is hoping that the next plot twists will favor him.

"I know there's a lot of bad news out there, but I'm looking beyond the bad news," Romney said in Orange City, Iowa, trying to project optimism about both the U.S. economy and his own campaign. "I'm looking over the hill and seeing what's going to happen just down the road just a bit. And what's going to happen is America's about to come roaring back."

This is the last lap of a race that has always been close. Obama officially began his campaign last April. Romney began his last June. Now, after 15 months, the two remain virtually tied in national polls.

Obama does have a slight lead in two of eight key swing states: Florida and New Hampshire. Obama's staff believes it has a "small but important" lead in others. But the polls show the remaining six - Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and Wisconsin - are still anybody's guess.

In the past two weeks, both parties had hoped that their elaborate conventions might finally move this election's stuck needle. Romney tried and failed: Polls showed no significant "bounce." Obama's convention ended Thursday, so it's too soon to tell whether he did better.

At this point, few voters seem to be genuinely undecided. Polls show that less than one in 10 is genuinely open to changing his or her vote. But now, two vast machines - campaigns and allied organizations with at least $1 billion to spend - will set out to change the minds they can and motivate the ones already on their side.

On Friday, Romney's campaign rolled out a $4.5 million ad buy, 15 new TV spots in eight states. "Here in [insert state name], we're not better off under President Obama," the ads said.

"This is when ordinary people, as opposed to you and I . . . really begin to pay attention," said Candice Nelson, a professor at American University. "Most people have real lives."

The next key moment may be the first presidential debate, to be held Oct. 3 in Denver.

There, two highly stage-managed candidates will appear in an environment they can't control. Both have faltered in this spotlight before: This spring, Romney offered Texas Gov. Rick Perry a whopping $10,000 bet. In 2008, Obama offered rival Hillary Rodham Clinton a backhanded compliment that was mainly backhand: "You're likable enough."

On Friday, however, the two campaigns remained locked in their old long-distance debate, going nowhere. Should Obama be blamed because the economy is faltering? Or should he be celebrated because it's not worse?

Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), campaigning in Nevada, argued it was the former.

Earlier in the day,a new jobs reportshowed that the economy added a paltry 96,000 jobs in August. The unemployment rate had declined, but for a depressing reason: More than 300,000 people stopped looking for work.

"President Obama is not a bad guy. He's good at giving great speeches. He's just really bad at creating jobs," Ryan said, as some in the crowd booed Obama's name. "If we want the next four years to be any different from the last four years, we need a new president."

Obama, in Portsmouth, argued again that he had prevented a catastrophe. He focused on the fact that any jobs had been gained at all. He said Romney was offering only tired ideas for fixing the mess.

"Tax cuts, tax cuts, gut some regulations, oh, and more tax cuts," Obama said derisively. "Tax cuts when times are good; tax cuts when times are bad. Tax cuts to help you lose a few extra pounds. Tax cuts to improve your love life. It will cure anything, according to them."

There was also something even more tired: a debate about a speech. Romney aides panned Obama's convention address on Thursday night, arguing that it fell flat in prime time.

But Obama's senior adviser, David Plouffe, countered that the speech will play well in the critical swing states and help boost voter registrations and turnout. Obama believes he "did exactly what he came to the convention to do last night," campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Before Obama went on stage, Psaki said, his daughters, Malia and Sasha, reenacted a scene from the movie "Hannah Montana," in which they told him, "Go get 'em, baby," and Obama "really enjoyed that. It made him laugh, and it just kind of reminded him of what's important and what this is all about."

fahrenthold@washpost.com

nakamurad@washpost.com

Nakamura reported from Iowa City. Nia-Malika Henderson in Orange City, Iowa; Felicia Sonmez in Sparks, Nev.; and Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report.


LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2012


LANGUAGE: ENGLISH


DISTRIBUTION: Every Zone


PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper



Copyright 2012 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company, LLC d/b/a Washington Post Digital
All Rights Reserved